100 Things

1. The right and left halves of my brain have always been at constant war.
2. This made choosing a career path especially challenging for me.
3. The left half of my brain teamed up with my father in high school and convinced me to pursue an engineering career.
4. That lasted about 2 years, until after being gruesomely repressed and abandoned, the right half of my brain gained the courage to come into light.
5. This resulted in my abandoning engineering and going to art school.
6. I felt at the time that any compromise between art and tech would mean selling out.
7. According to my former self, I sold out.
8. I’ve realized a comfortable middle ground in graphic and web design.
9. I still miss and fantasize about having my own studio.
10. And at the same time, I dream of becoming a master programmer.
11. I’m a work-a-holic. So the challenge for me will be not to fill up the remainder of the list with anything work related, here we go…
12. I’ve lived in Poznan, Poland for the last 4 years.
13. I met my husband, Jurek, (a Pole) when I was studying art at the art academy here.
14. I returned to the states to finish my degree.
15. We had a long distance relationship for almost 2 years before we got married in 2000.
16. He went to the states and we were married in my home town in Pennsylvania.
17. He was denied a tourist visa during our courtship, so we had to apply for a fiancé visa.
19. He met my family face to face for the first time 1.5 months before the wedding, after the wedding was planned and paid for.
20. I planned our entire wedding by myself in less than 4 months (including hand made invitations and centerpieces), on top of taking care of all of the immigration papers.
21. I can’t remember freaking out during the wedding preparation, however my mom may remember differently.
21. We lived in the US for 2 years before deciding to return to Poland so that Jurek could finish his master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. (The left half of my brain finds this extremely sexy:)
23. My husband is brilliant, loving, sensitive, everything that I could have ever asked for in a partner.
24. He graduates within the next month, and we are still unsure where to go from here.
25. I am embarrassed at my inability to master the Polish language during my stay here.
26. I blame this on the fact that all of my employment for the last 4 years has required me to speak English.
27. For the first year that we were here, I taught conversation and writing at Adam Mickiewiecz University (and at a private university, and gave private classes).
28. I burnt myself out with teaching in the first year, and welcomed the opportunity to work in graphics/web design.
29. I use Polish only when shopping and to speak to my mother-in-law and the few friends I have here that do not know English.
30. I understand almost everything said to me in Polish, however my grammar is atrocious.
31. My husband also has some problems with English.
32. He learned English just by the desire to communicate with me.
33. His grammar and writing skills are horrid as well, but his vocabulary and fluency are quite impressive.
34. We both need to work on our language skills.
35. Children love me. Even Polish children who don’t understand me all of the time.
36. Jurek and I will have kids someday and probably a house full of animals.
37. We did have one cat, Jacek, while in the states.
38. We had to leave him when we first came to Poland.
39. Jacek was Jurek’s best friend in the 2 years that we spent there.
40. Jacek was rescued from a parking lot at Jurek’s work. He and his siblings were distributed between the employees.
41. He went everywhere with us, he enjoyed hiking, and especially sitting on our shoulders while driving in the car.
42. We built a little ladder for him to climb in and out of our 2nd floor kitchen window while we weren’t home.
43. It broke our hearts to leave him, but we thought it was better to leave him in a place that he could have some freedom instead of taking him to a large foreign city, when we weren’t even sure if they would detain him at the border. (Jacek had some feline diseases from living exposed to the elements).
44. Jacek was hit by a car a week after we left him.
45. Since then, Jurek and I vowed not to get another animal until we are certain that we will never have to leave them behind.
46. That is sole motivation for us to settle.
47. I consider myself very crafty, and would be more so if I had the time. (what an excuse!)
48. I taught myself how to knit a few years ago.
49. At first it was scarves. Then it was bags, hats, gloves, socks, sweaters.
50. I mostly knit for other people.
51. I mostly do everything for other people.
52. I’m just not motivated to let’s say, make a sweater or a website for myself. But if someone else needs my help, I’ll all over it.
53. I do have the yarn and patterns to make myself two sweaters.
54. Ok, let’s face it, I have a lot more yarn than that.
55. I was waiting to knit my first Ribbie Cardie (www.chicknits.com) to bust out into the blogging scene.
56. I’ve had the pattern and yarn for almost a year now. Maybe this will be motivation, but probably not.
57. I’ve started reading more novels lately.
58. For the last few years, I’ve mostly read news articles or technical instructional materials.
59. I really enjoy mysteries.
60. I love warm weather and don’t mind humidity that much.
61. I really love living in Europe, I only wish that my family and friends could live closer, and that the plane tickets weren’t so darn expensive.
62. I’m glad that I’ve had the chance to live in Poland for an extended period of time.
63. Being here as a student, I was sheltered from experiencing real life here.
64. I feel now that Jurek and I have a much deeper understanding of each other now, having both experienced what it means to survive in our respective cultures.
65. I have a younger brother that has visited us three times in Poznan, my parents have been over twice.
66. Although they have promised, none of my American friends have made any attempt to visit (you know who you are – shame on YOU ALL).
67. If we live in the US, I would love to have the opportunity to show my Polish friends around.
68. I’m left-handed.
69. My maternal great grand father lived to be 99 (1 month shy of his 100th birthday) and his wife lived to be 96. My grandmother is now 89 and going strong.
70. fLongevity does not run on my father’s side.
71. Polish cuisine is a bit boring to me.
72. I was a vegetarian for 14 years before coming here. Now I eat fish and chicken.
73. My husband is very meat and potatoes, with lots of oil.
74. He sure is skinny for eating the things he does. We’ll see how long that lasts.
75. I like a variety of different foods Mexican, Mediterranean, Italian, and Thai to name a few. There is just too much good food out there.
76. I consider myself a decent cook, but I do not cook much.
77. It still amazes me how some people are so territorial over their kitchens.
78. Namely my mother and my mother-in-law. Geesh.
79. In my family, there is a history of obsessive compulsive cleaning.
80. I did not inherit that gene.
81. I haven’t figured out yet if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
82. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a filthy person, but I will answer the door if I haven’t dust or vacuumed in the past 24 hours.
83. I also don’t tell everyone how ‘dirty’ and such a ‘mess’ my house is when they could eat off of the floor.
84. And I never judge a person by how clean their house is.
85. Once Jurek and I went on vacation and came home to find out my mom and grandmother had spring cleaned our house, defrosted the refrigerator, bought and hung new curtains and throw rugs.
86. While I am thankful for the gesture, my decorating tastes in NO WAY resemble that of my family (read country kitchen). And was annoyed by the lacy curtains hanging on my windows. I’m still cringing.
87. I get my desire to please others from my mom, if someone needs my help, I enjoy helping them.
88. I, on the other hand am not good at asking for help.
89. I have extremely thick hair and bad eyesight.
90. My thick hair has resulted in year after year of not being satisfied with my hairstyle.
91. Until a year ago when I started going to a stylist in Poznan, who is magical.
92. I’m afraid to move anywhere out of her radius, for fear of reverting back to the days of bad hair.
93. I usually wear contacts, however did treat myself to the extremely thin lenses in the last pair of glasses that I purchased.
94. Well worth the money for a little bit of self esteem that it has afforded me.
95. I think my childhood eye doctor is the reason for my poor eyesight.
96. I believe he prescribed too strong a prescription time after time and consistently made my eyes worse.
97. I did not find out that my prescription was too strong until I had my eyes examined in Poznan.
98. This was extremely disturbing to me since I’ve had glasses since the 4th grade.
99. I’ve considered laser eye surgery, but am still reluctant.
100. I’m also considering laser hair removal, also reluctant.
101. I love to exercise – but don’t spend nearly the time that I should at it.
102 I love kickboxing, yoga, Pilates, tap dancing, and any other kind of dancing and hope the work them all into my exercise plan in the near future.

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