100 Things About Me

I've seen this little feature on a lot of other people's blogs, so I figure it's time I did it. And I can't figure out how to link it to the sidebar, so I'll do it here.

1. My real name is Gabriela.
2. My regular readers know this anyway.
3. I was born on (if you've read this, you know already).
4. In Oldham, England. (close to Manchester)
5. My family left England to move to Canada when I was 6 months old.
6. Family legend is that they brought me on the plane in a basket.
7. I nearly drowned once.
8. At a family picnic, when I was 4 or 5 years old.
9. I was dangling a piece of grass into a river, and what must have been a pretty big fish pulled me in.
10. I fell into a river and the rapids were quite strong.
11. I remember looking up at the surface of the water, feeling my heart pound with fear, seeing bright sunlight, and hearing a voice say, "It's going to be alright. Just keep thrashing."
12. Finally, someone pulled me out.
13. I have struggled with weight for most of my life, but until I was about 7 or 8 years old, I was quite slender and "normal", weight-wise.
14. My relationship with my mother is terrible.
15. We have never gotten along, and I find it all I can do sometimes just to be civil to her.
16. But I have to, because I need her to watch my daughter for me.
17. So I have to swallow all her shit.
18. Occasionally I get so pissed off at her bullshit that I speak up about it, and then I suffer for it.
19. She knows how to make me feel completely miserable and disgusted with myself.
20. I have two older brothers.
21. My younger older-brother nearly died when he was about 16 years old.
22. He was riding his bike on a drizzly day down a hill and plowed head-first into a tree.
23. Incredibly lucky for him, an off-duty policeman was jogging in the park that day and saw him lying there.
24. He did CPR and called 911.
25. His finding him saved his life, because if he hadn't, he definitely would have died.
26. He had to have major brain surgery.
27. They flew in the best neurosurgeon in the country from his holiday in Hawaii.
28. When we got the call that my brother was gravely injured and may not make it, I felt a chill up my spine.
29. I had had a premonition about it shortly before it happened.
30. I was just sitting around the house one day, and all of a sudden, "What if something happens to Mark? (my brother)" popped into my head. I never had thoughts like that, but at the time I just brushed it off.
31. The only time I ever saw my dad cry was when my brother was in the hospital.
32. It scared the shit out of me, because my dad was a big, tough guy. If he cried, I knew it was serious.
33. My brother made it, but he hasn't been the same since, in my opinion.
34. He is physically okay, but his personality changed. He became a much more black-and-white type person, and thinks he knows it all.
35. My other older brother, Glenn, is an incredibly wonderful, kind person.
36. He took the place of my emotionally unavailable parents when I was growing up.
37. He paid my way through college and does not want to be paid back.
38. Because of him, I got a chance to do the kind of work I like to do.
39. I have always been a book- and music-oriented person, largely because of the influence of my brothers.
40. I have an obsession with Henry VIII and his six wives because of my brother.
41. He had an album by Rick Wakeman, the former keyboardist for Yes, called "The Six Wives of Henry VIII".
42. The cover had a picture of Rick in Madame Tussaud's surrounded by wax figures of Henry and his six wives.
43. He wrote a piece of music for each queen.
44. There were little bios of each queen on the back of the album. I read them and became obsessed.
45. Since then, I read everything I can about them.
46. My favourite queen is Anne Boleyn, although if I had known her personally, I would probably have despised her.
47. I grew up listening to Yes, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, Styx, Supertramp, Zeppelin, and Rush.
48. When my brothers graduated to punk, I followed soon after. Then I started listening to The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Ramones.
49. I like all types of music except country, but the types that speak to my soul are really loud rock 'n roll/metal and alternative.
50. I lost my virginity when I was 18.
51. It was with an older man.
52. For some reason, I was crazy about him, but he was a total asshole.
53. He was in his 40s, had been to jail, and was verbally abusive to me.
54. He always used to call me fat and tell me I needed to lose weight.
55. He was initially attracted to my girlfriend, when we first him (in a bar, of course), but this didn't stop me. I had to have him.
56. I turned him on a lot sexually, and that's the only reason he had anything to do with me.
57. This should tell you quite a bit about my self-esteem at the time.
58. Back in my teens, I considered any kind of sexual conquest, e.g. making out, petting, a trophy of sorts. I used to keep track of encounters as if they were proof of how desirable I was.
59. But I always wanted just one boyfriend.
60. I met my only long-term boyfriend, who became my husband, through a mutual friend. She set us up.
61. We met in May, 1987, and until I left our home in early 2006, we have never been apart for very long.
62. Although we have broken up many times.
63. He is a wonderful man, for the most part, and I love him ... but there is no passion between us.
64. When I got pregnant, I was glad but terrified of the actual birth ... so much so that I asked my obstetrician (when I was about a month pregnant) if I could just book a Caesarian.
65. Shortly before I got pregnant, I had cut out a picture of a cute baby and taped it in my "wish" notebook.
66. I felt very awkward about being pregnant.
67. I was the exact opposite of Demi Moore posing proudly nude on the cover of Vanity Fair.
68. I hid my belly, although I was so large at the time, it was actually hard to tell I was pregnant.
69. I thought I would be in labour for many hours.
70. In reality, it took 3 hours max.
71. My doctor induced my labour by giving me Pitocin. I kept telling the nurses I needed a shot of something, but they didn't believe me. Finally, one of them checked me and said, "Oh, you're ready to push."
72. Giving birth to my daughter was the most amazing experience of my life.
73. It did not feel like I expected it to feel.
74. Yes, it hurt.
75. But it was also invigorating.
76. I felt more alive after I had given birth to my daughter than ever before in my entire life.
77. When I got off the birthing bed, there was a huge splotch of blood underneath me.
78. I found that strangely satisfying.
79. I couldn't breastfeed, which is really ironic. I'm famous for my tits.
80. Yet when it came to breastfeeding, forget it. I felt guilty for awhile. Then I finally said, "Fuck it. I tried my ass off."
81. I had the same weird type of precognition that I had with my brother, before my father died.
82. I was sitting in my parents' basement rec room, watching Letterman, I believe, when all of a sudden, I thought, "What if something happened to dad?" That something, I knew, was cancer. A couple months later (as far as I remember) he was diagnosed.
83. He ended up dying of it after a hellish year or so.
84. I believe he came to see me before he officially "left", and I had a dream before it happened.
85. I dreamt that I was in an office, typing at a typewriter. There was paper in the machine with numbers on it.
86. The morning he died, I was working in an office typing numbers on a piece of paper. I was alone in the room, which was right in the main office. There was a big staircase leading up to it, and a glass door coming in.
87. I was sitting there typing, then all of a sudden got this weird feeling like I could sense something floating up the stairs toward the door. Then I felt a "whoosh" which was the glass door to the office. This unbelievable feeling of peace and happiness enveloped me. I "felt" my dad smiling, and saying, "Goodbye, don't worry about me", then he was gone.
88. That morning my mother had gotten a call from the hospital that we needed to come down, he wasn't doing too well. My mother told me no, go to work. When I got home that afternoon, she told me what I already knew.
89. I have been writing since I was a teenager.
90. I have always had a high sex drive, and when I was a teenager and not getting much, I would draw pornographic pictures to get some kind of vicarious thrill from it. One night, I left them out, my mother found them and all hell broke loose.
91. I used to love snooping in my mother's and brothers' rooms.
92. I found my mother's diaphragm, a huge collection of marijuana seeds in a jar in my brother's bookcase, and his diary, which I opened and read. He was always in love, but it was always unrequited. (It runs in our family.)
93. I used to smoke marijuana and drink beer very heavily, in my teens and early 20s.
94. I've done acid numerous times and coke a couple.
95. I don't regret one moment of my drug experiences; it was great fun, for the most part.
96. One time after smoking some really good pot, I got totally freaked out though. It scared the hell out of me. I blacked out and woke up going, "Wha' happened?"
97. I'm glad those days are over, though. I did a lot of stupid things.
98. But it helped me to discover myself.
99. I learned a lot about myself.
100. And I'm still learning, to this day.