I've Never/I Would Never...

1. I've never cheated on a test -- not in elementary school, junior high, high school or college. Never.

2. I've never cheated on a significant other.

3. I've never been to the west coast. (The only states I have been in are: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and Florida, and I flew to Florida so I was never actually in the states in between here and there.) I've never been out of the country either.

4. I've never shaved my entire head. (the bottom half and sides, yes.)

5. I've never gotten drunk on whiskey or scotch. I think I have been drunk on every other type of alcoholic beverage at one time or another though. I really dislike whiskey, and while I thoroughly enjoy the smell of scotch, the taste is a whole different story. Yikes.

6. I've never been in a play. I always wanted to, but I couldn't get past the stage fright during or the anxiety prior to the audition process.

7. I've never been ice skating.

8. I've never been a cheerleader. (But I've always wanted to be one, even in high school while I pretended to think they were so uncool.)

9. I've never been involved in a serious car accident involving a vehicle being totaled, have never been present during a natural disaster, and I've never had a near death experience. (knock on wood)

10. I've never broken a bone.

11. I've never spanked my children (or anyone else's for that matter.) I did swat at Mini's hand once when she was pretty little because I kept telling her "no" and "hot" when she was reaching over and over and over and over again toward the hot stove, and I removed her from the kitchen but she kept coming back, and finally she reached and was going to get severely burned so I slapped her hand sort of instinctively to keep her from getting burned. I cried. (She didn't.) I felt like a monster. I feel guilty about it to this day. I'm really sorry I did that. I don't believe in hitting children.

12. I've never liked history. That is, until I started taking art history classes at school. Suddenly history became a lot more interesting. My husband was a history major. That's funny to me.

13. I've never gotten jewelry/flowers/candy from a significant other as a Valentine's Day or anniversary gift.

14. I've never seen male strippers. (I don't really think I would want to either.) Female strippers seem to really like me though.

15. I've never been excited about our country's leader until Barack Obama became our president.

16. I would never have an abortion. Not even if I were raped. I think abortion is exactly the same as murder, it's just called something else and done in a medical facility under the grossly misleading title of medicine.

17. I've never been good at small talk. I will go to elaborate lengths to avoid someone I don't know very well whom I see in passing (like at Target for example) so that I don't have to make small talk. It makes me hyperventilate slightly and sweat profusely and stutter inexplicably.

18. I've never thought of myself as (or wanted to be) a career woman. That's not to say that I necessarily wanted to be barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen wearing house dresses for all of my adult life either. I'm an artist at heart, and all I ever really wanted to do was take pictures and make art. I guess I always understood that I could do that from home while making babies and baking cookies. Even though the career path is not for me, I do envy the women who go that direction because of their strength and independence and bank accounts they are solely in charge of (and a number of other things too.) Feminism is about choice. I love being a woman and being with women, especially multi-generational gatherings of women. For the record, I love men too, but that wasn't what this was about.

19. I've never been good at making new friends. (See #17.) I think I am seen as aloof or bitchy or something because of it. I really am really friendly, but I get so scared at first, so it takes me a little bit to start being friendly. I am extremely self-conscious. Alcohol helps.

20. I've never thought I was good enough at anything. If I get an 'A' on a paper, I think my professor didn't read it thoroughly, or if I get an 'A' on an art project, I assume it's some sort of a fluke and make a mental list of all the ways it's inferior to other people's pieces. If I get an 'A-' on a test, I will berate myself for days over the one(s) I got wrong. If I get lower than an 'A-', well then I might as well drop the class, drop out of school, crawl in a hole, and die because clearly I am a failure at everything. This has to do with a drawing I made of an elephant when I was about 7 years old, and then a poem I wrote based on a wolf in sheep's clothing when I was 10. I won't get into it now, but these two incidents have shaped me significantly. I always think my successes are undeserved and that at any given point I will be exposed for the fraud that I am. I am reading a lot of self-help books now to remedy this.

21. I've never eaten sushi. It's not that I won't eat it, it's just that I wouldn't know where to get good sushi or what to order/buy if I went to said place. I need someone who knows about sushi to introduce me to its greatness. I very much like the idea of sushi. I want to love sushi.

22. I've never had blue hair. I have, however, had brown, black, blond, orange, burgundy, green, purple, pink, and several shades of red hair.

23. I've never been as happy as I am now. I don't know if it's because I'm in my thirties now and I'm coming into myself more, or if it's because of my husband or my kids or what, but it's great to really be content with my place in the world.

24. I've never been to a Phish concert. I did see Phil Lesh, but on the way in I had my paraphernalia confiscated, and that soured me to the rest of the experience. I was also doing the Atkins thing at that time, and I really hated it since I'm not the biggest of carnivores to begin with, and I was so sugar-deprived that I nearly passed out if it hadn't been for a fence that held me up. The whole thing was really sort of a dud for me.

25. I've never been very good at staying focused on an activity for very long except for art projects. I get very involved with them and tend to stick with it for hours and hours and hours. But other things are hard for me to stay focused on. Like cooking. I love to do it, but I have such bad ADD sometimes, and I get easily distracted. I nearly burned down my kitchen last fall while I was cooking and I forgot something on the stove. A fire started in the pan which eventually burned out when the food in the pan turned to ashes. Luckily for me, that's as far as the fire went especially since the curtains are right next the the pan that was burning. My entire kitchen (walls and cupboards included) is currently covered in sticky black smoke residue, and it doesn't come clean. I will have to repaint in the spring. I also ruined an entire set of sauce pans from similar episodes of forgetfulness over the course of the last 2 years. Oh, and speaking of starting kitchens on fire, I started my kitchen on fire when I was three or four too. We had a gas stove, and I wanted to make my parents breakfast in bed. I turned on the stove and tried to cook breakfast using my kitchen play set pots and pans. They melted and started on fire and I nearly burned down the whole place.