Sorry I’ve been slacking while in another country, and after June wrote this and sent it to me to post for her, I promptly neglected it. It’s fun to read for me… It reminds me why I love her so much. (Not that it requires a list of things about her to remind me, but well, you know what I mean.)

Enough about me… here’s June:
1. I like lemons so much I can eat them like you eat an orange. I just don’t much for the sake of my tooth enamel.
2. When I was nine, I lived in El Limon, Venezuela.
3. I got glasses when I was five years old. I wondered how in the world all the other kids knew what was on the chalkboard when the teacher asked us questions in regard to what she’d written on it. Come to find out, I’m near-sighted like water is wet. On the ride home with my first pair of glasses on, I looked out the window and saw the tops of tall fir trees for the very first time. Up until then, I had assumed that they were so tall, that no one could see the tops and that they just faded up into the sky. With a fair amount of astonishment, I mentioned the fact that I could see the tops of the tress to my mom. She started crying.
4. I was a butt model when I was about 14. My dad was a farrier and had invented a handy-dandy little invention called the Whoa-ring which, as he put it, would “change a horse’s attitude right quick.” One of the perks of the Whoa-ring was that it fit in the back pocket of yer (no, not “your”) jeans. Thus, the butt modeling for a Western Horseman ad.
5. Although neither of my parents played any instrument, they realized their young daughter was quirky and creative (that’s what they called unsocial, maladjusted children in the 70’s) so they had me start piano lessons at age 7. I was so shy that when I couldn’t play something at a lesson, I’d start silently crying and swiping at my tears which made my fingers slip off the keys and blurred my already bad vision even more. I took lessons until I graduated from high school. Now I can play about half of three Bach etudes and that’s it. But, I don’t cry about it any more.
6. Tomatoes and/or onions make almost any food taste better.
7. I think different hues and shades of green can be used more successfully together than those of any other color. I wonder if the appeal of mixed greens is inherently appealing due to the vast array of greens simultaneously occurring in nature.
8. Green is my favorite color. But barely. All color is Good.
9. My parents decorated their house with giant, presidential-sized baby portraits of my siblings and I. My grandfather was a professional photographer and so the portraits were amazingly well-done…sepia-toned (back when sepia-tone was real and not a mere Photoshop filter) and with cool, retro (now) frames. It must’ve seemed weird to visitors though as our house was a 1500 square foot tract home in the suburbs.
10. I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.
11. As a child, I would create elaborate, imaginary stories that always ended with me saving someone’s life.
12. I didn’t like salad dressing until I was about 23.
13. I cringe everytime I hear someone say “It’s a God thing.”
14. Be Thou My Vision is perhaps my favorite hymn.
15. I’ve always liked my name. I was born in August. Most people give me a nickname about 15 seconds after they meet me. These include but are not limited to: Junebug, Bugsy, Buggo, Buggums, Junie, June-tune, Juniper, Junettes, Junester… Occasionally, people ask me how I spell my name and I can count on at least one person saying “It’s your month!” during the first week of June every year.
16. I didn’t like living in Nashville, but I like using “ya’ll.” I consider it my souvenir from my three years spent in the south.
17. I think it’s understandable but ridiculous how moms are seemingly incapable of not sharing their own birthing stories with pregnant women.
18. I’m not sure I’ve ever been that friend who says what someone ‘needs to hear, even if they don’t like it.’ I’m the friend who says “Ohh…I’m so sorry…that must be really hard…that really does suck…I’m so sorry…here, let me give you a hug.”
19. My first job was picking filberts (aka, hazelnuts) off the ground.
20. I hated babysitting. I did it only for the cash. It’s still not my favorite thing.
21. If I had the means, in this order: housekeeper, personal trainer, once-a-week nanny, personal chef, gardner.
22. I wish I took more delight in keeping house and cooking for my family.
23. I worry that I’m going to become a little butchy from living with three males.
24. I didn’t really like the color pink, mostly on moral/social grounds, until about four years ago.
25. Know-it-alls make me crazy.
26. I don’t think the political opinions most people hold are very informed. Basically, aren’t most of us are choosing who to listen to and believe more than doing the hard work of being accurately informed. But, is it even possible to get accurately informed? I wish I could trust someone, anyone, for accurate information.
27. I went to a different school every year up until sixth grade.
28. My best childhood friend and I continually “challenged” each other for first chair flute from grades 5-8.
29. I had my appendix out when I was 12. When the doctor asked my mom if my menstrual cycle had started yet and she said no, he said “Oh, ok, because these pains could just be from that.” Being that I was doubled over in excruciating pain and puking my head off, I thought to myself “No way….really? Could this really be from THAT?!” I thought he must be exaggerating. Little did I know, I would in fact spend one day of every month for the next 20+ years in that kind of pain due to Aunt Flo. They say there’s no medical reason. Thanks Eve.
30. From ages 12-14 I looked like an alien.
31. If my high school to college boyfriend had asked me to marry him, I might have said yes. Perish the thought.
32. Tribe alert: I grew up believing that losing your virginity before marriage was just about the biggest sin any child could commit. In order of severity, it was above assault and battery, just below murder, tied with smoking. The original part: After hearing my parents comment that “these things happen” when a friend we knew was expecting, for years I thought that pregnancy was a spontaneous and unpredictable condition. My mom never had “the talk” with me. Instead, one day she said “there’s something for you on the table” and upon looking, I discovered a small book entitled “Almost Twelve.” It explained how babies came to be and that when husbands and wives loved each other in a baby-making way, it made God very happy. I was thirteen when Mom gave me the “Almost Twelve” book. I learned a lot.
33. In 8th grade my GPA was 3.95 so I didn’t get whatever certificate all the 4.0ers were given at “graduation.” This inspired a mental shift in me that carried over into the present day: Who gives a freaking flying frikkity-frak about math anyway?!!
34. I don’t remember my SAT score but I know that the verbal was exceedingly high and the math was frighteningly low. When I applied for AP English my senior year of high school, the teacher cornered me and said “Well I’m just concerned because scores of this much variance usually indicate a mind that is truly unbalanced.” In retrospect, I think he was joking but at the time, all I could muster was “I’m just really bad at math.” He said “Me too” and I was in. I aced that class.
35. Apparently I need to teach the rest of the world how to put a roll of toilet paper onto an empty spindle.
36. I like it when my house is clean but at the end of my life, I don’t want to look back over the years and list ‘making things very clean’ as one of the primary ways I spent my time.
37. I’m still not sure we shouldn’t have named our second son Ezra. We were afraid it might seem like we just rearranged our first son’s (Zane) name. But, I dunno….
38.  Before I married my musician husband, I only dated three guys. They were: an overly sensitive boy who became a writer/English teacher/spiritual nut case, an artist and an aspiring poet.
39. I know I probably shouldn’t, but I like Kelly Clarkson’s music.
40. Outside of the obvious issues (contentment, reasonableness, closet space, charity, etc.) I can’t have enough: shoes, purses, clothes, jewelry, dishes.
41. In some ways I’m a girlie-girl.
42. My parents didn’t have a tv in our house until I was 16. This made my siblings and I feel like freaks and we’d watch ANYTHING on tv whenever we had the chance. We have three tv’s in our house presently. (But one is in the closet.)
43. In college I was stalked by a lesbian at a gallery opening.
44. I wish I’d chosen an instrument other than the flute to begin learning at age 10 and to minor in at college.
45. I think people’s praise means too much to me.
46. I’m not always open to suggestions on how to raise my children.
47. Everyone said I was mature for my age throughout my entire childhood. I was quiet, not mature.
48. I had zero study skills when I went to college.
49. I know people really don’t know what to say when, upon learning that I paint, they say “Oh, so you’re an arteeeeest!”
50. A young man who meant very much to me, who had told me I was the only one for him, was killed in September of my senior year of college.
51. College sucked for me.
52. When I met Brian, I was buff and tan from an out of character back-packing and canoe-portaging trip. I misrepresented myself…and he fell for it.
53. I take a strange, reverse-snob delight in finding cute clothes in unexpected places. I recently bought a skirt at Rite-Aid which everyone “just loves!”
54. My parents traded their couch for a nice camera for me when I was in college so I could take a photography class.
55. I excelled in all aspects of color theory and application in all of my art classes. I totally sucked at life drawing and 3-D anything. It probably didn’t help that at my conservative Christian school the life drawing models were required to wear bathing suits.
56. When I had it, I thought the title “Creative Director” was kind of cool.
57. Outside of the joy of getting a baby, I hated being pregnant.
58. Beautiful music moves me to tears. Quickly.
59. I grew up hearing my Dad’s cowboy music. I can quote Little Jimmy Dickens lyrics off the top of my head.
60. I can do a decent fake of auctioneering. My dad used to practice his skills by pretending to sell off us kids.
61. I have classic, undeniable SAD. (Seasonal Affective Disorder)
62. One of my more embarrassing moments was when I didn’t quite hear what Brian said when he whispered “May I kiss you?” before our first kiss.
63. For about the first four dates, I could never remember what Brian’s name was. About an hour in I’d realize that I’d forgotten again and he’d be talking about something and I’d be thinking “I know it’s something common, and I know it’s not John…hmmm…Todd? Mike? Jason?…oh man…”
64. Our wedding photographer caught on fire at our wedding. Her sweater, specifically.
65. One of the times I’ve felt most loved by my husband was when I was terribly ill, in the ICU and quite helpless. His care during that time spoke love to me in an entirely new way.
66. I’ve found that everything I ever heard about being willing to die for one’s children and feeling like your heart is walking around outside your body once you have children to be entirely true.
67. If men knew how appealing they are to women when they’re carrying a diaper bag, the stores would not be able to keep the bags in stock. What women see when they see a man carrying a diaper bag: a guy who is confident enough to not care, caring enough to help out and most likely, interested in having kids. I also like it when I see a man carrying his wife or girlfriend’s purse. To me it says that he’s not hung up on looking silly but more concerned with what small thing he can do to help his wife/girlfriend at any given moment.
68. My 30’s are immeasurably better than my 20’s were…so much so that these years make my 20’s seem like some kind of purgatory.
69. Only recently have I become comfortable with referring to myself as an artist. For so long it just seemed too presumptuous.
70. I think my experiences of our family barely making ends meet when I was a kid have served me well in my adult life.
71. I’m realizing lately that I’m sometimes intimidated by friends with loads of cash. I’m surprised at this and disappointed in myself.
72. When I was 17, I didn’t know what, by definition, “graphic design” was but I picked up a printed piece from the local symphony at my boyfriend’s house and was utterly taken with the combination of words, imagery and content (specifically, music) and I knew that I wanted to do that—to create things which had that combination of elements. I didn’t realize that would mean sitting behind a computer. It took awhile to adjust to that fact, but I did.
73. I find a lot of life very humorous but I think I have big melancholic tendencies.
74. I go back and forth between liking my nails really short and practical and simple and earthy looking and liking them long and elegant looking. (See #41)
75. I get unreasonably angry when I can’t find some random object that has been misplaced in the house.
76. Certain sounds my children make with their mouths make me instantly irritated.
77. After seeing the movie, “Fiddler on the Roof” when I was about 14, I desperately wanted to learn to play the violin. My dad bought me a half-wrecked one at a garage sale and then he and my mom made unsublte comments about me teaching myself.
78. When I was 17, I worked as a cashier at a Target. Some guy bought a box of condoms and when I realized what they were when I was holding the box, I dropped it as if it was a live rattlesnake and used both hands to shakily point the scanner gun at the upc. (See #32)
79. If I have to cook dinner, which I do, I’d like a glass of wine and jazz playing.
80. I’m certain I did a pretty lousy job of teaching for three semesters at Pepperdine.
81. Generally speaking, I have to hear or read things more than once in order to retain them but I can quote movie lines from years ago. What’s with that? (Name that dumb flick: “She’s boldy cast aside a slew of stale ideas!”)
82. My dad is like a character out of Silverado. I often marvel that I’m his offspring. He grew up riding and raising horses in the desert (but his dad was a photographer…go figure) and having all manner of novel-worthy adventures. He served in the Navy, worked a heap of odd jobs and rode bucking broncos in rodeos before he married my mom. He went to Oklahoma Farrier’s College and the Montana School of Auctioneering (both certificates hung on the walls of our home throughout my childhood) and supported a family by horseshoeing full-time for 30+ years. He’s presently in Louisiana, helping rebuild. Brian and I call him MacGyver…give the man a pair of pliers and a roll of tape and he’ll build you a house. He and my mom were totally supportive of me being a writing major and then switching to an art major.
83. At age 37 (one year older that I presently am) two of the disks in my mom’s spine deteriorated and she had major back surgery followed by every medical complication known to man. She spent a lot of my middle school years lying down, recovering from it all. When I was in high school she was nearly debilitated by an ferocious case of endomitriosis which almost killed her. I learned to cook and clean and budget and shop when I was not yet a teenager. I was shocked when I went off to college and some of my peers didn’t know how a washing machine worked. My mom got more and more able-bodied but it took me years to get over the urge to do things like tie her shoe for her if I noticed it had come undone. As a young adult, I’d cringe as I’d watch her bend over as that had been an impossibility for some years. I still have to look away if she gets up on a stool to reach something or tries to muscle something open.
84. I think Apple should make a “Mom-Mac”—a laptop encased in a shock-absorbing case with as water-proof as possible of a keyboard and other mom/small child friendly features. They could get tons of sponsors by having each Mom-mac pre-programmed with all kinds of kiddie games, store ads, links to parenting sites, etc. etc. etc. It needs to have a carrying handle too or better yet, a strap like a messenger style purse. (Wow, I put a slash between mom and small child…as if they are one and the same. Wooow.)
85. I love my children and I have a great life. More often than I’d care to admit though, the actual duties that make up my moment-by-moment life are alternately mind-numbingly mundane and utterly irritating. I think this has more to do with my character than with my actual life. I hold out great hope for my general improvement as a person.
86. I take great joy in the sheer cuteness, innocence and childishness of my children.
87. My children’s childishness is sometimes almost more than I can take.
88. I don’t get really sophisticated jazz. It’s boring and annoying sounding to me and the players sometimes act snobby. I guess I like jazz for slobs and idiots. I think that’s a category on iTunes, isn’t it?
89. I sometimes feel like people take a mental half-step back from me when they find out that I paint.
90. I have trouble answering the question “What do you paint?”
91. I like being tall but I do feel a little awkward when talking with adults who are significantly shorter than me. I slouch or if at all possible, sit.
92. I sprouted an extra molar when I was twenty-something.
93. Living in a house while remodeling it, with a toddler and a baby, was one of the more challenging times of my life. I started to wonder if I embodied ANY fruits of the spirit, to ANY degree. I’m still not sure what I think about all that, other than, I never want to do it again.
94. My first car was a Pontiac Sunbird that my older brother had left for dead. My dad rebuilt the engine for me but it still wouldn’t start whenever it got above 70 outside. This was a real problem in the summertime. It once started smoking from the dashboard and another time the entire drive train (or shaft? That long thingy that runs the length of the car, underneath. See #41) fell off on the freeway. My dad always made sure I was an AAA member.
95. When I was in college, my dad would find me a car before I came home each summer. He usually found them in fields and would trade some horse-shoeing for them since they were always vehicles that someone had long since given up on or had forgotten were there at all. He would haul the car home, breathe life into it (barely) and I would drive it all summer. When I went back to school in the fall, he would sell it and make a profit. The last car he did this with was a Chevy Malibu. That thing had a giant engine, a heater that would cook you in seconds and not much else. He gave it to Brian and I when we got married and then when we didn’t need it, he bought it back from us. Heh.
96. When I got super sick and was lying in the ER a couple years ago, my mom dropped everything and flew from a conference she was at in Minneapolis to L.A. and was at my side before they’d even put me in a room. Having my mom appear like that did kinda make me feel like I wasn’t long for this world but it was also really great because, ya know, she’s my mom.
97. I was grounded for a month (all of March) when I was in high school because I was home by my curfew but not actually in the house. Sitting in your boyfriend’s car, chatting (we should’ve been doing something to at least make it worth it, but no, we were actually chatting) does not, apparently, count as being home on time.
98. I met Brian’s grandmother on our wedding day and the first thing she said to me was “You can’t marry Brian…you look like you could be his sister!”
99. For the past few weeks I’ve been pointing out the “popcorn trees” to my two small sons. This is what I called blooming, flowering trees when I was little because that’s what they looked like to me. I haven’t yet taken the time to explain to my children that popcorn doesn’t actually grow on trees. I might do it whenever one of them asks for some popcorn from a “pink popcorn tree.”
100. I’d die without sunshine.