25 Random Things About Me

Someone made me do this on Facebook. For my friends who aren't on Fb (I'm looking at you, Margaret), here are 25 random things about me:

1. I have at least two significant things in common with John McCain: I love Abba, and I'm an adoptive mom.
2. Sometimes I hate living in the city and dream of a quiet house in the suburbs.
3. But mostly that sounds like a nightmare.
4. I am a convert to Christianity.
5. I love gathered silence of the Quakerly sort, and high liturgy of the Catholic sort.
6. I grow, can and freeze a lot of my own food, right here in the heart of the city.
7. I graduated near the top of my law school class. I loved loved loved law school.
8. Practicing law was a nightmare.
9. Julie and I have been a couple for almost 22 years. More than half our lives.
10. I have a fairly cordial relationship with our friendly neighborhood drug dealers, but the mentally ill ex-prostitute across the street whom I've known since she was 12 hates me these days because she thinks I'm narcing on her. I'm not, but there's no convincing her.
11. Keeping my house clean is integral to my mental health.
12. I just looked through my high school yearbook, and it is full of ads for fertilizers, and John Deere dealerships, and feed stores.
13. I'm named after my late grandmother, who was Swedish. My daughter is named after my late mother, who was Dutch. Marta Trixie Marta Trixie. We're hoping to break this tradition in the next generation.
14. I'm a pretty good baker. Bread mostly, but I also make a mean white cake with buttercream frosting.
15. I'm not so sure that the terms "liberal" or "progressive" accurately describe my political philosophy any more. But I don't think there are other terms out there that do any better.
16. On the whole, I would almost always rather be reading a book.
17. I'm crazy about my kids. Even when they drive me crazy. I think they are insanely beautiful and talented. Not that I'm biased or anything.
18. If I weren't living this life, the only other life I can imagine is that of a monastic. Benedictine, probably. Or Trappist. I love silence. Probably more than is reasonably healthy sometimes.
19. I ran a marathon in 5.5 hours. I ran a half marathon faster than that, and it was the greatest thing I ever did just for myself.
20. A pet-peeve of mine is non-profit boards that don't understand what governance is and what it isn't. Which includes most non-profit boards, in my experience.
21. I studied in Israel and Palestine just before the first Intifada.
22. Thomas Merton is my patron saint.
23. Despite what my Facebook page says, Julie and I are not technically married. But only because we haven't made it up to Connecticut yet. (And who woulda thought it would ever be as easy as that?)
24. I think slavery and its legacy of institutionalized racism is THE American tragedy.
25. I'm not nearly as upset as most people I know that Rick Warren is giving the invocation at Barrack Obama's inauguration