25 Things About Me

Taking a cue from one of Betsy's recent posts, I thought I would share a bit about myself. A couple of times over the past few years, a blogger will start a "25 things about me" post then pretty soon everyone would do it and it actually ends up to be a pretty cool set of lists, kind of like a "carnival about me" in which you find out that your favorite bloggers really are the interesting, quirky people they appear to be. I'm not sure how interesting or quirky I am but here goes...

1. I have Asperger's Syndrome. I am not horribly afflicted but it is there.
2. I am also Face Blind to a degree. A nice researcher at Harvard is trying to help me recognize faces.
3. I can eat the same food every day for a month and it won't bother me.
4. I can sing in a half dozen languages even though I don't often know what I am saying since if I hear a song, I can easily learn it phonetically (see #1).
5. People think I am some sort of tech guru when in actuality, I just Google a lot.
6. My husband is 20 years older than I am. We are also an inter-racial couple (we didn't know we were an inter-racial couple until about eight years into our marriage when we saw a couple that looked like us on Oprah talking about their inter-racial relationship. Me: "hubby, did you know we are an inter-racial couple?" Hubby: "no, who said" Me: "Oprah" Hubby: "wow...I didn't know that" Me: "me neither. Shocking.").
7. I love coffee drinks like a coffee frapuccino or Baskin Robbins cappuccino blast but have never drank a cup of coffee--the taste is overwhelmingly strong.
8. I am child free by choice. I admire wonderful moms and find kids to be interesting to observe but just never had the desire to have my own children.
9. I hate drama in my life, I don't see the need for it. Either your life is generally good and happy or you change it to make it so. I don't understand people who need a constant flurry of drama to keep their lives interesting.
10. I don't drink, smoke, or use drugs. Ick.
11. The shortest job I ever had was three days. I had to sit at a desk and enter data into a computer. My co-workers told me not to work so fast or it would make them look bad. I thought if I had to work like that for the rest of my life I would want to slit my wrists eventually so I quit instead.
12. I feel more comfortable around people from different cultures than around whites--odd since I was born and raised in a very rural, all white place.
13. I can hear electricity. Usually if I am standing near a wall or any other place that there is an electrical current, I can hear it.
14. My purpose in life is to help people, I have known this nearly all my life.
15. I didn't finish college. I made more money with my own business than I would have made being a teacher which is what I wanted to be when I went to college.
16. I admire people who are successful in a variety of areas when being successful in any one area would have been a lifetime achievement for others. John Nance is a good example, he is an airline pilot, colonel, famous writer, sought after speaker, etc.
17. I love to read. All throughout school, instead of going to the cafeteria for lunch, I would hang out in the library and read. You can still find me at Barnes and Noble reading quite often.
18. I need to be at sea level, near the ocean, most of the time. It makes me happy.
19. I can be very social and outgoing if it is part of my job, but I generally like to be by myself or hang out with the hubby.
20. I have always worked, starting with working in the school cafeteria to get free lunches. I bought my first car at 16 and my first house at 19. I have always felt like an adult with adult responsibilities even when I was 12.
21. I wish I was artistic. I can barely draw stick figures.
22. People think I can do a lot of things (rock climb, speak a foreign language, ballroom dance, design a website, etc) but I am really not that talented. I am just always interested in learning new things and will try everything that comes along whether I am good at it or not.
23. I need to figure out how to be comfortable having money. My tendency is to spend it and I think this relates to when I was a kid. Any time I got money someone (a parade of adults who were way irresponsible with money) would borrow the money I had saved and never pay it back. I guess I feel like if I don't use my money right away, someone will take it away from me.
24. I have five step kids. Some I helped raise. Others that I continue to help today. Also 11 step grand kids and two step great grand kids (yikes!).
25. I can bake amazing things but can't cook to save my life.

So that's all I can think of about me. I hope others who read this will write their own lists and link back to their list in the comments because I find this kind of info fascinating.