I managed to go a year and a half without attempting one of these things. Right now though, I can’t sleep, so here we go:

1. I was born on June 25, 1976.
2. June 25th is also George Michael’s birthday. I think there’s something to be said about that.
3. As a child, my favourite movies were Peter Pan and the anime version of The Little Mermaid (NOT NOT NOT the stupid Disney version– in the anime one she actually dies at the end like she’s supposed to). I was all about the mermaids. Later when the movie “Splash” came out on TV I would beg my parents to be allowed to stay up past 8 pm to watch it. I haven’t yet seen Splash on video or anything so if Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah had crazy mermaid sex in the movie I’ve never seen it.
4. I’m very nostalgic and sometimes worry that I’m taking the “When I was a kid…” thing too far and am becoming Grandpa Simpson.
5. I have an amazing long-term memory — I have ‘flash’ memories from before I was 1, and have consistent memories starting at the age of 2.
6. My short-term memory is terrible. I have to talk to myself to remember where I put things (“I’m putting my pen down on my desk. My pen is on my desk”).
7. I have attention deficit disorder, which I think might explain my weird memory.
8. I’m not now, nor have I ever been, medicated for my ADD. Sometimes I’m proud of that. Sometimes I really think I should go see about getting a prescription.
9. I’m Irish/Scottish/French (with so many other things thrown in there according to my mom’s geneological research).
10. When I learned to speak it was in both French and English. It could be confusing for people who only spoke one language to hear me saying “I want une pamplemousse”.
11. When I’m at my parents’ house we lapse back and forth between the two languages. Except for my dad. He understands french and could speak it but doesn’t feel comfortable. So we’ll speak french and he’ll answer in english.
12. All my schooling was in french, except for kindergarten, which was in the air force base school.
13. My parents were in the air force until my dad retired when I was 15.
14. I went to university (in french) for five years and got two degrees– my BA (major in French, minor in English and History) and then my B.Ed (specialisation in teaching French as a second language in the elementary and secondary grades).
15. I am, as you’ve probably guessed, a teacher.
16. I love my job although this year (2004-2005) is shaping up to be a very stressful one for me.
17. I think I have an okay sense of humour.
18. Although occasionally I find things funny that no one else does.
19. I was diagnosed with asthma at the age of 7, although I’d been having breathing problems since I was born.
20. My asthma can be pretty severe. The worst thing it ever did to me was when it caused both of my lungs to collapse and I had to hang around in the hospital.
21. I was 23 and they put me in the childrens’ ward of the hospital.
22. I was born with curly blonde hair and blue eyes.
23. My hair got darker as I got older, going from blonde to brown to auburn.
24. My hair all fell out in 2002. Now I get to have any colour hair I want (though so far my wigs have all been brown).
25. I love the movie White Christmas. I can watch it over and over. I know all the dialogue by heart. And the songs– oh the songs. Although I really think the “choreography” song isn’t all that good.
26. There’s a sort of ‘legend’ in my family that if I watch the movie White Christmas, it snows. One year I watched it four times in one day. We got 50 cm of snow the next day. My mother tries to limit me now.
27. I love to read.
28. If I don’t read before going to bed I have a very hard time sleeping.
29. I’m still afraid of the dark.
30. As a child I was so afraid of Satan that I would lay in bed repeating over and over “I love God. I hate the Devil” until I fell asleep.
31. I’m Catholic, although my parents weren’t crazy indoctrinators. I got most of my information about Satan from some weird TV documentary that a babysitter let me watch, about an exorcism. Said babysitter also told me that if I tried to get out of bed, Satan (who lived under my bed) would snatch me up and take me away.
32. The school I went to from grade 1 – 12 wasn’t officially a Catholic school but we had catechism classes from gr. 1-8.
33. Since I was the best reader in grade 2, I got to read a speech at my class’ First Communion.
34. I still remember most of it.
35. I have one living grandparent– my dad’s mom. She’s 80. Her oldest sister is 94 so things are looking pretty good for her.
36. My mother’s father had a stroke when I was five. He lived in the hospital for the next 7 years and then died from ‘complications from pneumonia’ although my aunt (who was a nurse at that hospital) says she heard from other nurses that someone put a feeding tube into his lung.
37. My mother’s mother died at the age of 82 from either Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour– no autopsy so no one’s really sure. That was 10 years ago.
38. My father’s father died when I was 18. He was only 68 years old; he’d been a coal miner since the age of 13 and years of coal dust and Export A’s had turned his lungs into hardened black sponges.
39. I used to play the flute.
40. I wish I could still play an instrument but know that I could never manage the piano (I’ve tried).
41. My family has lived all over– I was born in Nova Scotia, then we moved to Alberta, P.E.I.,Saskatchewan, and back to PEI. My parents and older sister have also lived in Ontario and Quebec.
42. I have now been in every province of Canada except for BC and the 3 Territories.
43. My first time in Newfoundland was in the summer of 2004. I went with the love of my life to visit his family. I think it’s beautiful there and it’s nowhere near what I’d thought it would be (absolutely no grass or plants anywhere, only rocks. Yes even adults have weird preconceived notions).
44. My younger brother’s birthday is one year and one day after mine.
45. When we used to tell people our birthdays they would ask if we were twins, although we couldn’t look more different if we tried.
46. My older sister is 7 years older than I am.
47. My parents and siblings all have dark hair and eyes (except my dad, whose eyes are blue).
48. Since I look nothing like my family members I always thought I was adopted.
49. I would ask about it all the time. No really. Constantly. Whenever I was upset about something, I would ask about the possibility of my having been adopted. I’m sure it wasn’t all that much fun for my parents.
50. One day my father finally took me out into the backyard and said “Louise, we’ve kept it from you long enough. Now it’s time you know the truth. You were adopted.” I felt a little triumphant thrill in my heart. Then he continued: “… but they brought you back. So we were stuck with you after all.”
51. My dad has the same twisted sense of humour as me.
52. When I was a child I wanted to be either an artist, a teacher, or a librarian..
53. I am a teacher. I’ve worked in libraries (all through university as summer jobs and at the university library). I still love to draw but am nowhere near an artist.
54. I love to draw but hate to colour, if that makes sense.
55. I used to cry when someone would call me “Weezie”, because the lady on the Jeffersons always seemed to be yelling and I thought she was mean.
56. I dated a man named George and his family insisted on calling me Weezie. I really didn’t think it was funny.
57. I can handle Weezie now but still (and will forever) HATE when people call me Lou. Hate. HATE.
58. Rob and I met on the phone 3 years ago in August.
59. I love him so much. Sometimes I look at him and want to bite him, I love him so much. Yes I realize that’s weird.
60. Rob and I have extremely bizarre nicknames for each other including “monkey bean chicken head lizard face of love”.
61. I have a hard time imagining what my life would be like without him, so I don’t.
62. I love cheese. If I go shopping when I’m hungry, I come home with six bags of cheese. And maybe some bread.
63. I am allergic to the “protein foods”– beef, pork, and chicken– although less so to chicken. I’ll eat chicken probably once or twice a week, and beef when I can’t stand it anymore (I love cheeseburgers but once I eat one I end up barfing/ cosmic pooping all night so I generally try to save it for weekends) .
64. I’m my own worst enemy.
65. I love cooking shows. My favourite was “What’s For Dinner” with Ken Kostick and Mary Jo Eustace. I liked when he’d try to show the world her thong, and she’d talk about his “touper”. Of course it’s not on anymore but fear not, I taped a bunch of episodes from TV when it was on.
66. I love to cook but hate cleaning up, which means that I don’t generally cook elaborate meals unless I’m at my mother’s house because she is a crazy cleaner and likes to clean up after me.
67. I moved to Halifax from PEI in 2001.
68. It was a very crazy time in my life. I’d just been dumped very harshly one week before our ‘anniversary’, then had a miscarriage, then was hired on the first day of school to teach so moved here (where coincidentally, my ex lived) one day and started teaching the next. Meanwhile my ex thought I was stalking him (I seriously wasn’t) and September 11th happened and I think I passed most of that Fall in a fog.
69. I hate fish. It turns out I’m allergic to salmon so I now have a legitemate reason not to eat it.
70. I am addicted to Coca Cola.
71. I always give up Coke for Lent, and never even miss it, but invariably succumb to its spell within hours of Lent finishing.
72. I was always the tallest person (not just girl– person) in my class, all through 12th grade.
73. I’m only 5’9″. I went to Prom in flats and was still half an inch taller than my date.
74. I was never popular in high school– was seen as more of a geek than anything else.
75. One of my best friends now went through gr’s 1-12 with me and always thought I was a ‘nerd’ until she got to know me in university.
76. My oldest friend who I still speak to I have known since 8th grade; her birthday is the day before mine. She now has three sons.
77. I want to get married, and have kids, and am starting to feel old. I’m afraid that I’ll suddenly be barren at the age of 30.
78. I only feel that way because my sister had all 3 of her kids before she was 25, and my brother got married at 22 and has had one baby as of the time I’m writing this. So that makes me a late starter.
79. Aside from my mother (who’s 5’5″), I’m the shortest person in my immediate family (my sister’s 5’11″, my dad and brother are 6’1″ and 6’2″).
80. My mother is the tallest member of her immediate family– her tallest brother is 5’4″.
81. Even though I’m allergic to animals I love pets.
82. We got a dog when I was 10 and kept her for 16 years. Her name was Wicket.
83. Rob and I have a hairless guinea pig– his name is Emilio Estevez. He’s crabby and rude. Typical adolescent. We’re going to get another one soon, and on the table are the names Charlie Sheen and Kiefer Sutherland.
83. When I was about one and a half or two I climbed out a second storey window in our house (I was supposed to be napping) and hung there by my fingertips, yelling, until my mom came and got me. She smacked my ass then nailed all the windows shut.
84. When I was seven and my sister was 14, she loved Michael Jackson. Loved. She would make my brother and I spend our allowance on Jackson 5 trading cards. We’d get the gum, she’d get the cards. .
85. I love the Monkees TV show. And movie. And I have a fondness for their music. I feel absolutely no shame. I mean where else would you get such meaningful lyrics as “… and I bet she will regret it when they find me in the morning wet and drowned… and the word gets round… I’m goin’ down”.
86. I love the movie Empire Records. Again, I can recite the entire thing. Can even stand Renee Zellweger in it because she looks as though she’d been eating sandwiches at that point in her life.
87. I’ve had pneumonia 3 times in my life. I was Not Amused.
88. I had chicken pox twice; once when I was 6 months old and then again when I was 14.
89. I really love sleeping. It’s unhealthy, really. I would be so happy if I could actually sleep for 10 hours a night. I never do, though.
90. I love all the holidays. All of them. I don’t have a favourite, really.
91. When I have kids I think that *I* should get gifts on their birthdays because I mean, all the work I’ll have to go through to get them born? They should be thanking me .
92. I worry that Rob’s and my children will be nuts– with parents like us, what are their chances?
93. As a teacher I am compiling a definite list of names I will never use for my children. And I have a definite list of things my children will not get away with. I’m going to be the most controlling parent the world has ever seen, I know it. I’m not happy about that.
94. I eat weird combinations of foods. One of the weirdest is semisweet baker’s chocolate and green olives. I’ve also been known to dip potato chips in mustard.
95. I love collections. I’m a packrat.
96. I love my own handwriting.
97. Sometimes other peoples’ handwriting bothers me. I don’t know why.
98. I knit. And crochet. Probably not all that well..
99. I don’t watch much TV– because I can never remember when anything’s on, and because our TV is tiny. We’re going to buy a bigger TV someday and you’ll never tear me away from it I bet.
100. I have many secret boyfriends but can’t talk about them now because it’s the end of the list. But Rob knows about them all and is fine with it. Really it’s only a secret from … the secret boyfriends.