sueeeus

100 Things About Me…

My name is sueeeus.

I am…

…a loving mother to two beautiful boys, sister to many, friend to some.

100 things about me, in no particular order…

1. I am half Korean.
2. I have six brothers, five alive.
3. I have two sisters.
4. I am the oldest girl.
5. I am second of nine.
6. Just before I started Jr. High, I moved to a rural town and our well ran dry. The only water we had was dark dark dark silty putrid orange. Our pipes froze every winter, too, so we didn’t even have access to the orange water for months. We hauled drinking water from town in 5 gallon jugs and sometimes melted snow to wash dishes and take sponge baths. It was so embarrassing for a teenage girl. After I left home and went to college, my parents were able to afford to have a new well drilled. Crystal clear delicious water.
7. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering.
8. I graduated ‘Cum Laude’.
9. I could have done better.
10. I only chose engineering because that major had the best hiring stats at the time.
11. I minored in Computer Science because I liked computers/computing/programming.
12. I used to think that CS was for people who weren’t smart enough for engineering, so I didn’t take it very seriously, and I didn’t go work for Microsoft in the 80s because it was beneath me.
13. I am sometimes a snob (see 12).
14. I love broccoli.
15. I can’t stand the taste, texture, or smell of most squash.
16. I don’t like stink bugs.
17. I love gadgets. Especially kitchen gadgets.
18. I love tools.  Because tools are gadgets. See 17.
19. I met my ex-husband the father of my kids on the internet (match.com) in December of 2001.
20. I‘m used to be embarrassed to tell people how we met.
21. I got married 01 April 2003. I chose April Fool’s day so I’d always remember, but in all honesty (and in retrospect) it was deliberate and a blatant expression of the level of respect I had for the occasion and the act.
22. I should have known knew better, but I got my two boys, so it was all worth it.
23. I got divorced on 04 January 2010.
24. I only just (8 Oct 2017) realized the symmetry and boundary of these significant dates: married 4/1 and divorced 1/4.
25. I take most things way too seriously.
26. When I was in second grade, some of the boys called me fat.
27. I wasn’t very fat at all. I had a little bit of a blubber belly, is all.
28. More than 30 years later, one of those boys ended up working down the hall from me, in a giant company that is located in another state, over 350 miles from where we went to grade school.  He turned out to be a respectable professional and I was able to drop the childhood arch-enemy label.
29. I spent the better part of my life ‘morbidly obese’ by the text book standards.
30. I think I was the hottest obese person I know!
31. When I was a teenager and obsessed with the size of my waist (which was 27-29 inches if I recall), I told my sister that her waist would never be smaller than mine. (Teenagers can be I was so cruel.)
32. I weighed about twice as much as my sister for the better part of a decade or two.
33. I find it tragic that body issues have consumed so much of my life.
34. I resolved obesity with bariatric surgery.
35. Removing the obesity related issues from life made room for other issues to come to light.
36. I didn’t get a car until after I graduated from college.
37. I’ve always wanted to have children. Two boys and a girl.
38. I’m 40 44 45 52.
39. I had sporadic ovulation during my so-called fertile years.
40. I got pregnant the first month that I started fertility treatment.
41. I miscarried my twins on my 38th birthday. (Not far along, but a missed miscarriage and horrible, terrifying, dreadful, painful, horrible horrible traumatic event.)
42. I took a break from fertility treatments (gave up) and started taking classes for foster parenting certification with the option for adoption.
43. When I finally got authorization to proceed with additional fertility treatment, I took a precautionary pregnancy test. It was positive.
44. I believe in miracles.
45. I’ve had a life prayer that I’ve prayed for most of my life, to become a mother before I’m 40. (I know not to bargain with God, and impose time limits, but I did it just the same.)
46. I gave birth to a beautiful healthy boy 2 months and 2 weeks before I turned 40.
47. I’ve been pregnant seven times.
48. I have burn scars on my arm from hot oil that I spilled on the day I miscarried one of those pregnancies (August 12, 2007).
49. I believe there is much truth to what the bible says, once various interpretations are stripped away and re-evaluated from best available unadulterated source.
50. I have a deep hunger for understanding.
51. I don’t go to church.
52. I love to sing.
53. I don’t sing very well, but sometimes it seems like I do.
54. I am eclectic.
55. I love words.
56. Neither of my boys would breast feed.
57. I pumped like a mad woman and gave both of my boys breast milk for an entire year (and then some, with the second).
58. I like to design and make things. All kinds of things. Like fountains, furniture, toys, costumes, gadgets, gizmos, web sites.
59. I seldom meet my lofty expectations.
60. I like to paint.
61. I like to write.
62. I like to go outside in a torrential downpour and turn my face toward the sky.
63. I love hot hot hot spicy food.
64. I want to write a book some day. And have it be a bestseller.
65. I like designing living spaces.
66. Rearranging furniture is one of my favorite pastimes.
67. I want to start my own business and have it be wildly successful.
68. I love TV shows and films. They calm me down because I get too stressed out over too many things.
69. I get too stressed out over too many things.
70. I cry during TV shows and movies when sad things happen.
71. Especially the news. I don’t like to watch the news. I don’t like to see people’s babies washed away by tsunamis and hurricanes and such.
72. I stopped exposing myself to the news years ago.
73. I intentionally ate half a piece of spice cake laced with hashish in Amsterdam, for the ‘full Amsterdam experience’ and also in retaliation to my then-boyfriend’s accusations of my hypocrisy for passing judgment against the recreational use of mind altering substances when I’d never walked a mile in those shoes, so to speak.
74. I’ll never do that again, and my opinion about mind-altering substance use remains intact. But The blue spaghetti that I had for supper that evening was the best ever. I don’t remember what turned it blue, but it had nothing to do with the hash. Honestly.
75. On a camping trip once, in a beautiful forest by a crystal clear stream, I danced naked in the pouring rain by a blazing bonfire in the middle of the night with my face lifted up to heaven. It was bliss. Later the rain stopped and the stars came out. It was magical.
76. I climbed a mountain (a small one) once.
77. I’ve seen signs and wonders when I was paying attention.
78. I sang an Ode to Joy in the tongue of angels, standing alone under a marbled dome in the cemetery where Beethoven is buried (Vienna). It was ethereal.
79. I don’t know anything about wine, but I love cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, and merlot.
80. I’m particular about coffee and tea. Flavor, smoothness, color, etc. are of utmost importance to me. Rich and smooth, not bitter.
81. With regard to cars and things mechanical. I used to change my own oil. I even changed out a starter. Twice.
82. My name is on a patent as a co-inventor.
83. It made the top ten inventions list for the company that year, 1990ish. At the award ceremony, the vice-president, not knowing me from Jack, introduced me as Mister Sueeeus. I was the only woman honored at that event.
84. I secretly enjoyed the smug feeling I experienced when his face turned beet red as he realized his faux pas.
85. I am not proud that I had, let alone enjoyed, that secret smug feeling.
86. I don’t like wastefulness.
87. I am very frugal. Most of the time.
88. I spent a fortune on my coffee setup.  The grinder alone cost more than my first car.
89. I recycle.
90. I compost.
91. I love books. The look, the smell, the feel. Hardbound is best. Leather hardbound is bestest.
92. I have the complete Oxford English Dictionary, 12 volumes plus supplement, first edition, second printing.
93. I like disco.
94. For most of my life, I’ve felt as though I’m on the verge of knowing (all) languages and playing (all) musical instruments.
95. I only know one language moderately well.
96. I can barely play a smattering of musical instruments, and none well.
97. I am a helper.
98. I am a seeker.
99. I was once told that I have the ears of a dog — I volunteered in a sound lab study, and I was able to hear frequencies beyond the expected range.
100. I am empathic.

Published on: Sep 8, 2008

Updated on: Oct 8, 2017