Twenty-five Random Facts About Me meme

[ciroccoj]

So this meme's been making the rounds over on facebook. Late to the party, but here goes:

1. I speak English, French and Spanish, and have learned to (very haltingly) read Portuguese. Keep thinking some day I'll buy language immersion software so I can learn to understand and speak it too. Oh and I took a Sign Language class when I was a teen. Don't remember most of it.
   
   
2. I wanted to be called Violet or Cindy when I was a kid. No idea why.
   
   
3. I am heterozygous for brown eyed genes. I only know this because my younger son has blue eyes.
   
   
4. I've learned to say I was "raised as" an only child. I have three younger brothers and one younger sister, the eldest of whom is sixteen years younger than me.
   
   
5. I have many aliases. My Chilean birth certificate says one thing, my Canadian Citizenship card says another, my Queen's diploma says something else, and my driver's license and teacher's certificate have errors (driver's license gives me a random middle initial that I believe was the result of a blot on the application form, and my teacher's certificate calls me Zimena.) I've also got two online names, used an alias when I volunteered at a crisis centre, have had a series of nicknames, and for many years was called "wench" by one of my closest friends in high school.
   
   By this point, I think the only names I've never been called are "Violet" and "Cindy."
   
   
6. Both times I was pregnant I wished for a quiet, shy, artistic little girl. Both times got the exact polar opposite. Ever so glad I did :)
   
   
7. I was an atheist as a child, then agnostic for most of my adult life, then back to atheist after my mom died. It's not a 100% certainty, though. I'm not really sure enough to say with certainty that there is no God; just that I personally don't think He exists.
   
   
8. I have been to every continent but Antarctica.
   
   
9. You know outing yourself? Someone I'm very close to has, I think, unintentionally inned himself, by being monogamously married to a woman for many years. Most people who know him would be surprised to learn he's bi, even though he's never made a secret of it. It's just somehow never come up. Ever.
   
   
10. I make most of my kids' Halloween costumes.
    
    
11. I've worked at a maximum security prison. Spent a few months locked into a room with murderers and rapists, was told my desk was right underneath Paul Bernardo's cell, and still felt safer there than in most high schools ;)
    
    
12. When the Queen's Birth Control Centre was planning to change its name to be more inclusive of non-heterosexuals, I was a volunteer and voted for our name to become the Sexual Health And Guidance centre, just for the initials. We became the Sexual Health Resource Centre instead. Boo.
    
    
13. My most precious material possessions are a set of diamond earrings I got from my parents when I graduated from high school, and a set of pearl earrings I got from my mother-in-law when I got married.
    
    
14. I have written approximately 950,000 words of fiction. Not a single one will ever be published.
    
    
15. When I was a waitress at Swiss Chalet, the manager once pointed out to all the other waitresses that I had the "perkiest bow," and urged them all to copy my technique. I decided that I did not want to be a waitress any more.
    
    
16. I am still bitterly disappointed at my countrymen and women over our Toonie. For non-Canadians, that's a two-dollar coin, so named because our one-dollar coin has a loon on the back, and is called a Loonie.
    
    I mean, seriously, people. We had a chance to call one of our coins the Doubloon. And we picked Toonie instead? ::facepalm::
    
    
17. I have no body modesty whatsoever and would be perfectly content to wander about the city in the altogether if it wasn't illegal. And too cold, for most of the year.
    
    
18. I have eaten cow's tongue, goat meat, bull testicles, some giant rodent, pig's feet, chicken feet, and sheep brains. Most were pretty good. Brains were gross.
    
    
19. When I was a kid, every time somebody discovered I could speak Spanish and said, "Say something in Spanish!" I would respond with, "Que quieres que te diga?"
    
    
20. Both of my children had the same due date.
    
    
21. I don't like ice cream or Coke/Pepsi.
    
    
22. I learned to ski in the Atlas mountains. Loathed skiing with all my heart until I was a teenager.
    
    
23. I own two lipsticks and two blemish-hidey thingies. They come out for choir concerts, dates, and job interviews. I had a makeup kit with a wide array of cosmetics for a few years, never used it, and eventually donated it to a women's shelter.
    
    
24. I have been able to recite a four-minute long poem by Roald Dahl since I was ten.
    
    
25. I played Frederick in the Pirates of Penzance production of my elementary school. First and last time I've ever soloed.