Stuff I can't even believe I've done, part 1
1. Taken my 1- and 4-year-old girls on a few long-distance bus rides, by myself, up and down Syria.
2. Joined the ward women's basketball team when I was about 11. I knew I was no good and still wanted to do it (and did it). WTH. I guess my sense of shame hadn't kicked in yet.
3. Moved to Vermont for the summer, had a baby while there, and moved back to Arizona 13 days later.
4. Read the following books as an adolescent: Gone With the Wind, Not Without My Daughter, Persuasion, the complete stories of Sherlock Holmes, and some kind of encyclopedia of WWII.
5. Had sensitive conversations (family-sensitive, not government-sensitive, I promise) in a special surveillance-free room in a certain embassy in a certain country (I am so sorry if people are not supposed to know about those; to be honest, though, it's probably one of those things where the people you are trying to keep this information from were in fact the first ones to know it).
6. Modeled for Nike.
7. Auditioned for, and then got, the job of piano accompanist for a university performing arts department. I think about myself responding to that job advert and I just wonder, much like joining the ward basketball team, what was I thinking? But it ended up being one of the best things I've ever done, even if it was wildly out of character for me to put myself out there like that for the audition. I think nine times out of ten, I wouldn't have tried. It must have caught me at a strange moment.
8. Engaged in an instance (my one and only) of social urinating in 1996. It was during the Portland to Coast running relay and a bunch of us ladies had to pee and it was dark and we climbed down an embankment behind a bar and took care of our business together.
