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1. I was born in 1968, one month after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
2. The number 68 was on my powderpuff football jersey in college.
3. My best friend took the opportunity to be the number 69.
4. It’s cool that grown-ups get to choose their jersey number.
5. I was born in Seoul, Korea.
6. My parents were in med school when they met.
7. My father promised my mother that her career would always be as important as his.
8. My mother was perfectly happy to live in Korea.
9. We moved to the States when I was one.
10. My brother was born in 1969.
11. My sister was born in 1970.
12. We had moved seven times by the time I had turned twelve.
13. We mostly lived in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area.
14. My mom quit being a doctor to stay home to take care of us and never let any of us ever forget it.
15. Other than that, she was a pretty good mom or at least she let us do pretty much what we wanted.
16. For my brother that meant wrecking three cars by the time he was sixteen.
17. We moved to from Rockville to Potomac.
18. My brother made the mistake of bragging that the new house had five bathrooms.
19. Most of my old friends never spoke to me again.
20. We went to Walt Whitman High School which was ranked one of the ten best public high schools in the nation.
21. I decided that getting straight A’s was no longer worth the bother.
22. I decided to dedicate myself to my social life instead.
23. Senior year I was class president and voted best-personality.
24. I was rejected from Yale, Georgetown, and Amhearst.
25. I was accepted to U of Wisconsin, U of Michigan, and McGill.
26. I got a degree in English Literature from McGill University.
27. I spent most of my nights in Montreal bar-hopping and dancing.
28. We danced at places like Foufounes electrique, The Business, and The Thunderdome.
29. At the end of four years, I discovered that all my friends had been studying on the side, because they were done and I still wasn’t.
30. I promised that I would finish my last three classes while I was hanging out in France.
31. I lived in Reims, France for a year teaching English.
32. I came back to the States speaking French fluently, but still had not finished college.
33. I went back to Montreal for a semester and moved in with a friend I had met in Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles.
34. I discovered that Montreal was a French city.
35. I studied German, Korean and painting that semester and finished my degree.
36. I ran my first marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C.
37. I decided to travel around the States and Mexico with my friend Ken.
38. He ran out of money in Texas and flew home.
39. I continued on by myself through New Mexico, where I picked up a traveler named Dylan.
40. Dylan had not been in a car for over two years and made his living by playing his silver drum on the sidewalk.
41. I gave him a lift to Seattle so he could see his girlfriend.
42. After I dropped him off, I went to visit friends in Vancouver.
43. While I was in Vancouver my parents flew to a medical conference in Seattle, so I drove back down.
44. They had mail for me, which included a letter from an old friend who was now living in Seattle.
45. He offered me a job as an assistant director of a French camp on the San Juan Islands.
46. I accepted and then spent ten days hanging out on Orcas Island.
47. My friend Richard flew out from Toronto to travel through California with me.
48. We visited the grand Canyon, Death Valley and Joshua Tree.
49. We came to Joshua tree because Richard had worked with a guy named Jeremy who had opened up a café there.
50. After Richard left, I decided to work at the cappuccino bar until my summer camp gig.
51. Jeremy confessed that he liked me more than a friend and I had to move away.
52. I moved to a Buddhist meditation center in Joshua Tree called Dhama Dena run by Ruth Denison.
53. Ruth let me cook full-time, in exchange for room and board (in a trailer).
54. I learned to cook beans.
55. I meditated for an hour every morning and an hour every evening.
56. An artist named Sean Harrington came into the cappuccino bar and set me up with his girlfriend’s ex-husband.
57. I decided to move in with the ex-husband.
58. I shaved my head.
59. I drove up to Seattle for my new job and then promptly lost it once my old friend saw my new hair-style.
60. I drove back to Joshua Tree.
61. My brother is an investment banker and we all like to ask him for expensive gifts.
62. My sister is the senior statician for the SE Asian malaria project in Bangkok for Oxford University.
63. I disappointed my parents by getting pregnant at age 25.
64. In Joshua Tree, by an unemployed artist who was twelve years older than me.
65. He was employed and working on his Ph.D. at UCLA when I met him.
66. I was planning to leave him, but discovered I was pregnant.
67. We got married instead.
68. We lasted seven years.
69. Giving birth to my daughter Bella is the most important thing I have ever done.
70. I was a total hippy when she was born.
71. Bella was born at home with the support of two amazing midwives, Karen Baker and Sherry Johnson.
72. I was in labor from Friday night until Monday morning.
73. I did not have an epidural or an episiotomy.
74. My labor came in waves and fits and starts.
75. We almost went to the hospital three different times.
76. My friend Lisa, made pesto and videotaped the birth.
77. Bella’s entry into this world is marked by, “ohmygod, OhMyGod, OHMYGOD!”
78. Bella’s feet touched the ground for the first time 100 days after her birth (traditional Korean custom).
79. Bella was diapered in cloth diapers and ran naked most of her first three years.
80. She was marvelously rascally and universally loved.
81. She’s the same now, but different.
82. When Bella was three I got a job as a long-term sub in a third grade classroom.
83. My husband stayed at home with Bella because he couldn’t hold a job.
84. To keep the long-term subbing position, I had to enroll in a teaching program.
85. It was so easy that I decided to finish.
86. Another principal called and offered me a part-time job at the middle school the following year.
87. I ended up teaching for five years.
88. In the meantime Bella was homeschooled
89. Bella’s dad and I got divorced.
90. Every summer we would live for a month with my sister, wherever she happened to be in the world: Melbourne, London, and now Bangkok.
91. I left teaching to go back to school full- time for a master’s in Art Theory and Criticism.
92. To save money, Bella and I moved into a geodesic dome.
93. My new roommate, Joe, and his friend Chad helped me move in.
94. Chad and I kissed for the first time while watching Moulin Rouge.
95. I spent two years doing my master’s coursework at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
96. I started working on my thesis (“Intimacy in the Works and Collaborations of Janet Cardiff”)
97. Chad proposed.
98. I ran out of money and started teaching again.
99. I bought my first house.
100. I began blogging to avoid writing my thesis.