25 random facts about me

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about you.

1. i am scared of going down stairs. well, maybe not scared per se, but i'm very cautious. i think the initial fear came from the very steep stairs in my grandparents' house in japan. i never fell down them but i was always afraid i would.
2. i go through shopping phases when i'm only interested in buying one kind of thing. right now i'm in a book-buying phase. other times it's clothes, snacks, fabric or scrapbooking supplies.
3. i sleep best in my bed when rupert's not there; i sleep diagonally, on my stomach, my toes rubbing my "blankie (a well-worn sheet)," and drooling all over rupert's pillow.
4. i am obsessive compulsive about some things and a complete mess in other areas of my life. usually, i'm ocd about things that don't matter, and a mess in things that do matter.
5. i want to travel the world ... and be able to speak the language of the country i visit. not particularly realistic since i'm not very good at languages, but attempting to learn a language is the least you can do before traveling.
6. one day i'd like to have a masters degree ... in something.
7. when i was pregnant with ian i had a huge craving for hot dogs, but i never ate one. i did, however, eat way too much tito's tacos beans + chips (but no tacos). with maya i ate a lot of fruit. go figure.
8. i'm an awful singer (when i was young my mom told me not to sing out loud because my singing would kill the plants outside my window) but i love to sing rock band songs.
9. the only time in my life i drank alcohol semi-regularly was when i lived in japan. i think it had to do with needing to loosen up to participate in karaoke.
10. i'm a stickler for the rules ... to a fault. rupert hates it.
11. rupert and i had to take one of my little sister's friends to the emergency room for alcohol poisoning once. mind you, she showed up at my parents' house already drunk ... she was like 15.
12. for someone who prides herself on her memory, i am very bad at remembering the endings of movies and books.
13. i wrote my college application essay on why i was glad my parents got divorced.
14. if at all possible i prefer not to talk to people (even people i know well). hence, my disdain for the telephone and my over-reliance on email. which also means i usually prefer to deal with machines rather than people :: the supermarket self check-out, the atm, the automated postal center machine.
15. somewhat related, i have a hard time keeping eye contact with people during a conversation. i can only briefly hold eye contact before i get uncomfortable and have to avert my gaze. it's rude, i know, but i can't help it. please don't take it personally.
16. i like cute things with an edgy/spooky twist to them.
17. i am an avid japanese comic (manga) reader; have been since i was about eight or so. my first series was "dr. slump" by akira toriyama; i still have all of them. another series i cannot part with is "to-y" by atsushi kamijo. and i'm not ashamed to admit that even though i'm in my 30s i read a lot of manga geared towards teenagers.
18. i used to dislike japanese school so much that i would feign headaches and stomachaches every week so i could hang out in the nurse's office.
19. my favorite food is noodles. i could eat some kind of noodle dish for every meal. i think my love of noodles really blossomed the summer after sixth grade :: as usual, i was spending the summer in japan and i would have a bowl of wonton ramen at the local chinese restaurant, meme hanten, everyday after school. seriously, everyday.
20. my freshman year in high school i was the secretary for the quixotism club (a gaming club -- yes, i know, totally nerdy. but, in my defense, i wasn't a gamer; i was just the secretary). unfortunately, i didn't know how to spell "quixotism" (i didn't even know what it meant) so i guessed and wrote "quick sadism" for the bulletin. (as you can imagine, i didn't know what that meant either!) yeah, i got called into the office for that one.
21. when i'm nervous or bored i have a horrible habit of pulling out strands of hair. but i'm very particular about the kind of hair i yank out. they have to be very coarse or crinkly hair (my normal hair is pretty fine and straight).
22. since college i haven't been able to continue anything for longer than 10 months (except being married and being a mom). i only lasted 10 months at my first job out of college in japan; i dropped out of grad school after two quarters; i was a teacher's aid for one school year; i was a computer lab teacher for one school year; i only lasted two months as a teacher in watts for the university intern program at ucla; i subbed for six months; and now it looks like i've finally found my dream job that i want to do forever and they're going to lay me off because of budget cuts.
23. i hate to say this out loud, but i don't think i was meant to be a mother ... at least, it seems like i don't enjoy motherhood as much as most other moms i know. what's wrong with me?
24. as of right now, my favorite ... book :: neil gaiman's the graveyard book; animal :: the manatee; color :: grey; magazine :: school library journal; food :: matzo ball soup with fideo noodles; shirts :: striped; day of the week :: friday; nintendo ds game :: lego batman
25. rupert is the only man i've loved and will ever love.