Because I'm grading exams today...

...and procrastination is "my thing," here's more "100 Things About Me."

32. I’m very touchy about seeing obvious typographical or grammatical errors in other people’s work, even the error in the message rubbed into dust on the side window of a car which said, “Please washes me.” When I see such things, I’m overcome with a need to edit. The irony is that I cannot see my own typographical errors. It takes many rereads over several hours (and can even stretch into a couple of days) to find them all. What I need is to see my work in a different light, different color and type.

33. I prefer female singers to male singers. Whenever I have that free moment, that time in the car, that empty space in my day that I can fill with music, I will put Norah Jones on, or Alanis Morrisette, or Billie Holiday, or Etta James, or Sarah McLachlan, or ethnic music sung by women. I think it’s the fact that I can sing along – I like the freedom of singing alone in the car.

34. I hate the dentist. This stems from a pediatric dentist I had who kept our young mouths open with a strange device of rubbery-type sheeting and metal clamps. Perhaps my experience explains why I have no particular interest in latex clothing.

35. Scrapbooking is relaxing to me and a drain of financial resources – I have several drawers full of paper stuff, stickers, and empty albums, except I never get around to doing the work. My mother used to scrapbook before it became popular with the stay-at-home mother crowd – she used to cut greeting cards and glue the words/drawings next to her photographs. She stopped doing that when magnetic albums came out. I did the same thing in college, even with magnetic albums, sticking mementos next to the photos. My mother reorganized her pictures and with that, went her early scrapbook.

36. I’ve only had sex with one person (a Finnish man I met on the beach – from afar I thought he was beautiful and gay because of the hugging swimsuit he wore – but then he spoke to me in the water and I heard his accent and I turned to my sister and said, “He’s not gay, he’s Finnish!” From there, something I’d never do ever again, we spent the day, all three of us together on that beach and then I alone with the Finnish law student spent the next week touring Los Angeles among other things. He cut a lock of my black hair – I felt like a trophy, but I sort of liked it. He told me if I went to Finland, men would be crazy about me because of my curly, black hair.). The other seven men I’ve been with were repeated trysts of love-making.

37. I have little to no sense of how much things cost – if I go to the market, I just go to the nearest one to me and buy what I want or need without any thought as to whether the tomatoes are more expensive where I’m at or if I should buy them from the store across town. If I see something I want, I tend to buy it, sometimes even when I shouldn’t.

38. The only kind of exercise I enjoy is bike riding and hiking and swimming.

39. I have a feeling I’m doing this list wrong.

40. I’m afraid that when I finish this list, I’ll have nothing left to write about. Ever.

41. I forget important things unless I’ve made the effort to write the thing down in a calendar or I see notes from my husband reminding me or I’ve repeated the obligation many, many times to myself. My father was the same way – he told me once that on a particular afternoon, he’d been visiting the USC medical campus to take care of some grant business. On this day he stepped into the elevator and was facing a rather large flier posted on the wall. It announced a faculty dinner that very evening with a speaker who was to speak on a specific aspect of genetic research. He told me the name of the speaker, “looked very familiar.” After a moment or two, he realized the speaker was…none other than himself. He’d completely forgotten his obligation. He said in his special way of laughing and talking at the same time, “Had I not seen that poster, had I not gone to the medical campus that afternoon, I’d have completely missed this dinner! How embarrassing!”

42. The one time a boyfriend left me for another woman, I fell apart, wasting nearly a year mourning the relationship and in the worst depression I've ever known. And yet...I have been unfaithful to every single one of my lovers.

43. When I’m past child-raising, I’d like to volunteer my legal services to the Poverty Law Center or the ACLU or a firm that handles death-penalty appeals. With regard to death as punishment, I believe there should be next to no doubt as to guilt.

44. I’ve had a few stories of mine published in online journals, a couple of which have disappeared. I was sad when I could no longer Google them, which I’d do on occasion as a little boost of self-confidence.

45. I’ve never gotten a job without knowing someone on the inside track.

46. I don’t have a green thumb but I constantly plug away at my garden in an effort to turn that thumb green.

47. I have some sort of mental block when it comes to mathematics – I cannot add numbers quickly or subtract or multiply or divide. I never learned my times tables as a child. I managed to just know enough to maintain a “B” in my math classes throughout school, but this strange gray fog settles in when I have to do any math calculation. Forget accounting – the numbers in those columns will not match up. Ever. My sister did the accounting for my mother’s estate in a matter of days when I’d sat for months staring at the check book and the receipts and Excel and absolutely not being able to make the thing work.

48. I loved college and miss it all the time, missing the feeling of infinite possibility that lay in front of me.

49. I lived at home all throughout college and law school.

50. The fact is, I’m lazy.