Organic Mama

1. I am a compulsive organizer. Which means I drive my husband crazy trying to keep the house clean and tidy. It also means that everything has its own place, or it doesn't stay. Things that don't a home yet float around and around the house until they have one. Since having a child, I've had to get a little less tense about being totally organized. Little shortcuts like stuffing things in drawers to deal with later and not always folding my undies have become normal rather than anathema.
2. I detest crappy drivers. For all I know, I am one. But living in the Nascar state has made me wonder if some people just don't understand that driving is a risky thing and you could actually DIE.
3. I try very hard to take a zen approach to people I don't very much like, but I often fail miserably. This is true of political figures, like Monkey-boy Bush, as well as my neighbors and various family members. I'd like to be able to avoid taking certain kinds of things personally, but I feel like there's this angry little monster inside that stomps around waiting to be offended. My inner monster just doesn't want me to grow up!
4. Knitting is my latest crafty hobby. I started relearning to knit by making my son a blanket before (and after) he was born. I knit while I watch TV, which makes my poor hubby want to cry. I'm over my head with projects and ideas, but at least it feeds my creative yen.
5. Packrat? Connoisseur? Either way, I collect things. Right now I'm collecting books and kitchen stuff. It's very fun. Which leads me to admit...
6. I buy way more books than I could ever find the time to read. Bought with the best of intentions of course. And when I sort things onto bookshelves, I always put the stuff I haven't read in a pile so I know what I have on my plate.
7. Having a child finally taught me how to love. Wait, shouldn't that be my husband, you say? I thought so, but when my son arrived, I found that parts of my heart existed that I didn't know could be there. Having a baby and being a dedicated and attached parent has allowed me to open up closed and hardened parts, and to find new appreciation for others I care about as well.
8. I want very badly to finish a PhD in mediaeval Literature and Fantasy/Sci-Fi Fiction so I can be a college professor. Nuff said.
9. I know now that moving to the East coast was merely a short-term project to teach me how good I had it back home. That said, without this move I would not have my husband or my child, and I cannot live without both of them. So it was an educational move, and an important life-change, and I am thankful for both.
10. I have the coolest best friend in existence. I've learned more from her about the kind of person I want to be than I think I learned from other sources like teachers and parents. If I have a hero, it would be her.
11. As you could have probably guessed on your own, my favorite color is purple. And secondarily, blue. I love them together, I love them separately, I love them combined into beautiful new hues. I want to paint every room in my house some shade of bluish-violet.
12. I can't seem to get enthused about sports. I've tried. Really, I have tried my darndest. But even when one of my hometown (Seattle) teams is doing really well, I can't seem to work up the umpf behind my hoorahs.
13. This is not my first blog. I tried about a year ago to get on the bandwagon while my husband was hot on the idea. I ran into some rather unsavory arsenuts who were preaching in the other direction, so I bailed. Flamewars are not exciting to me, and often I'd like to join in, which makes me dislike myself just a bit. So I forswore the whole thing until I could find a way to get interested in blogging apart from being one of the gang.
14. I watch some TV, but NO cable. Like the microwave, cable TV is an invention I've done without for a decade or more. I watch the shows we download or buy on DVD, as in anything from the Whedon-verse and Alton Brown's Good Eats. Reality TV is garbage and a waste of valuable airwaves.
15. I LURVE the Harry Potter books & movies. I love it. I lurve it! I luuuurve all of it. Okay, I'll refrain from editorializing here about how the fourth movie blew chunks and that the books aren't just for children, blah blah blah. I'll save all that for a sickenly saccharine post later on.

All right then, time to get this baby on the presses. We'll just have to get to know me in 15-item installments, then.