25 things.

There has been a bit of a trend amongst my friends on facebook lately to do these "25 things" lists. Normally I wouldn't bother, as my computer time is so much grabbed in tiny increments these days, but I so enjoyed some of the things I learned about really dear friends I spent a chunk of my Sunday working on this (took 3 or four sittings!)

The only trouble with me doing a "list" is, as my friend Jamie Arpin-Ricci once said about me, I am not a sentence communicator, or a paragraph communicator, but a chapter communicator. So, here goes.

1. I was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta, but my parents moved from there when I was a baby, so I don’t remember it. However, even though I am quite good at spelling, I still panic when I have to spell the place I was born on any official form and almost always spell it with “e”s where the “i” should be. I even had to use spell check for this sentence. (I got it wrong. Again.)

2. I have an older brother and 2 younger sisters (Matthew, Elizabeth and Caroline) who I am very close to in age and love a lot. When we were little we wanted to repel down the side of something, like mountain climbers on their way down a rock face, so we tied a rope to my brother's closet bar and threw it out his second story window and took turns scaling down the side of our house with his friends. My Mum was only alerted after she became aware something was wrong when we all ran up the stairs. And then ran up the stairs. And then ran up the stairs. The closet bar was really bent.

3. I like my feet.

4. During my YWAM DTS and SOMD I spent more time with my pal Barry Houser than I did with my husband. Not out of anything untoward, only because Wade didn’t do DTS with me, only our outreach. (He was doing “errands” and “maintenance” with Phil.) I still really like that YWAM is a place were a Canadian Catholic clothing-store manager and a gun-owning Mennonite truck driver from Pennsylvania could become the best of friends.

5. I have several ‘before-I-die’ destinations. The Grand Canyon at sunset. (Okay, I seriously just started to cry when I typed that. Weird.) A Cirque Du Soliel performance; to go anywhere in South East Asia; to visit many friends in Australia; and pretty much all of continental Europe, especially Switzerland and a vineyard in either France or Italy where I have been befriended by the owners and they have invited my family in and they are feeding us a very long, beautiful supper with lots of wine and food of indescribable simultaneous simplicity and complexity of flavour.

6. Once, at a life changing meal in Spain with lots of wine and food of indescribable simultaneous simplicity and complexity of flavour, I was so happy and amazed, that by the end I declared if I tasted anything else that was good, I would surely cry. At which point, my dear friend Mike Davies, one never to deny a challenge, insisted I taste his liqueur. I did indeed weep with joy.

7. My friend and adopted sister Sandra, so inhabited the above story (#6 ) when I told it to her, that later on she was confused as to whether or not she had actually been at the dinner. People like that are like oxygen to me.

8. I can tie the stem of a maraschino cherry in a knot with my tongue.

9. My first concert was En Vogue and MC Hammer, 1990. Oh, no it wasn’t - it was the Beach Boys, with my Dad in 1985. (I was 12.) We rode our bikes. I was confused by the the funny smelling cigarettes.

10. My favourite concerts were, Peter Gabriel - the “Us” tour, with Jan; and seeing Coldplay for $10 with Dave Laird, Heidi Sand, Ange, Vern and Ralph before most people in Canada had ever heard of them.

11. The people who were with me during the most embarrassing moment in my life, which I did actually have a nightmare about afterward, are all tagged in my facebook note. If you're not sure of it's you, it probably wasn't you.

12. Pretty much every time I hear the opening bars of “Misty Mountain Hop” by Led Zeppelin, I think it is the perfect song to be playing right then.

13. I once yelled at a large airplane full of people. There were these old dears behind me from Australia and they were really panicked about missing their flight and I had totally become to sympathetic to them by hearing them talk. So we landed and the the steward asked everyone to remain seated so the old dears could get off first and people waited about 30 seconds (of course) and then stood up and the old dears were only about four rows up and they were panicking and I couldn’t take it. So I yelled at everyone to sit down. Everyone did, and remained seated until after the old dears were long gone - until one man looked at me and said “Can we get up now?”. I was mortified at the time, but now I’m so proud of me.

14. When I was young, I memorized the entire soundtrack to the movie “Annie” and remember singing as I was walking down the road, secretly hoping someone would discover me and make me famous. I also had an elaborate fantasy about being on the TV show “Kids Are People Too” because I had been selected to be the child star of the next Star Wars film (this was before “Jedi” came out) and in the movie, (and on the show) I could do karate.

15. I am quite a good cook, but almost every time I make a sauce, I ask my husband, who is an amazing cook, to tweak it. He almost always adds brown sugar, or vinegar, or both, no matter what kind of sauce it is.

16. I spent very long hours in front of the mirror as a child developing the ability to make my tongue into the shape of a three leafed clover and to avert my eyes to one side, then cross them, then switch them to the other side.

17. My maiden name is Payne. The family history is that my great-grandfather’s last name was Barrington, but he died in the war leaving my great-grandmother pregnant and unmarried, so we bear her maiden name, not his. My sisters and I thought Barrington was a far classier name and used to pretend we were high powered business executives with our office, Barrington Inc. My sister Lizzy was Cassandra Barrington and I was Antonia (aka Toni) Barrington.

18. I am kind of obsessed with the Oscars. I started watching it with my Mum when I was a kid, who you used to explain to me the politics behind the votes. My best friend Lee-Anne and I have watched it together for years, even though she moved to Calgary over 9 years ago. We take notes and compare fave moments. We have special snacks (pringles and cream soda) and we take it very seriously. No matter how old I get I can not resist doing fake Oscar speeches afterward. I can not believe I just found out my friend Jessica has been to the Oscars 10 times!!!!! Not fair.

19. I’ve been married for 11 1/2 years to Wade who is so amazing, and I love him more all the time, and the longer I’m married to him the more grateful and amazed I am at having a good marriage with someone who loves me so well.

20. In college I was a theatre major, and hung out at a blues bar a lot, where a lot of friends who were musicians played and live blues music still makes me really happy, which is not really the point of the blues, but I’m just generally a pretty happy person.

21. I love surprises but have had very few in my life. I had one surprise party once, but I was sick and it was pretty mellow so I actually almost forgot about it. Once my sister Lizzy and her friend Sarah surprised me when I lived in California. And once my friend Houser came (on his honeymoon!) and showed up on my doorstep and really, really surprised me, because he promised a long time before he would do it one day. And he did.

22. My middle name is Helen, my Mum’s first name. Eleanor is named in honour of her and my grandmother, Ellen.

23. I love, love, love to go to the movies. I don’t go very often since we’ve had kids. To me there is something so special about going and sitting in the dark with all these strangers and you all go on a journey together and there is popcorn and soda and red Twizzlers and you just escape everything for 2 hours. Watching a video is not even close.

24. When my friend Jan or my Mum make me tea and toast they get it right every time, and it is difficult to explain how perfect it is. One time my niece Kelsi said, “Granny makes the best toast.” and as silly as it sounded, she is right.

25. My favourite colour is robin’s egg blue.