Memories

I'll be 27 years old soon. What's awesome and weird about that is that I am starting measure certain things in decades... like, it was MORE THAN TEN YEARS AGO that I learned how to drive. Crazy.

Anyhow, I have decided to engage in the following exercise as self-therapy. These are 100 moments in my life I hope to remember as my life flashes before my eyes when I die. Or maybe just to pull out and look at every once in awhile. In no particular order:

1. Celebrating Tuesday at a bar in France
2. Drinking tequila with my Jazz Band in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition
3. Skipping school to get Corral burgers with my senior class girlfriends
4. Playing in the mud over the broken septic tank with mom's baking supplies
5. Falling out of a tree in the backyard and praying that I hadn't broken anything because, man, I was gonna be in trouble
6. Driving through the Painted Desert with my dad
7. Driving the old suburban cliffside through Arizona in the dark, only to have my dad tell me years later when he and my mom returned that the dropoff was horrible and we could've died
8. Eating Walla Walla Sweet Tacos at the Taco Truck with Tony on his first trip to Walla Walla
9. The moment Tony asked me to be his wife on top of a volcano in Bali
10. Walking down from the same volcano and realizing that the hike was a lot steeper and more treacherous than we could see in the dark
11. Eating real custard at Ted Drewe's in St. Louis
12. A raucous night of fondue and wine with Sarah in Geneva
13. Bungee jumping naked with Tony in Nanaimo on Valentine's Day, 2004
14. Dancing on the bar in Quito, Ecuador
15. Watching Tony enjoy escargots in St. Germain
16. Sleeping in the Wigwam Motel before it was renovated, and being mistaken for a "hired girl"
17. Trying to eat undercooked lamb and washing it down with a lot of wine while camping with Tony, Scott, and Megan
18. Alternating between barfing and catching salmon all day long on Mr. VanOver's boat while Tony jumped around
19. Killing my new (to me) car at a stoplight while I was learning to drive a manual and having my dad jump out and yell at the guy behind me for honking at me
20. Driving the old Suburban until "I" rotted out the exhaust system
21. Making my brother walk from the parking lot instead of dropping him off at the front door of school and watching the gel in his hair melt in the rain
22. My first kiss *blush*
23. Running and sliding in the mud holes on Ankeny Field with Adam, Jamie, and Dave
24. Meeting a bunch of French guys at a tram stop and becoming fast friends
25. Playing Kings in the Sigma Chi house while Timmy fed us burgers bite by bite, from his hand
26. Tripping upstage to sing Karaoke at my birthday last year
27. Riding in a shopping cart around Whitman campus with a silver crash helmet on
28. Playing trumpet with my section in the wheatfields
29. Climbing the tallest volcano in Ecuador - 75 degrees at 10,000 feet, below freezing at 16,000 feet
30. Staying late at school to edit the Golden I with Mrs. Stucki
31. Running the Lake Samish 6.5 mile race and not stopping, not even once
32. Seeing that positive pregnancy test and thinking, Holy Shit.
33. Seeing the ultrasound of the baby for the first time
34. Hearing the baby's heartbeat for the first time
35. Convincing the cops, after I returned from the library to find a party at home, that even though there was underage drinking going on in my house, that there should be no citations
36. Drinking at the Heineken factory at 10 am
37. Drinking and dancing with crazy Irishmen in Dublin on New Year's Eve 2003
38. Drinking and dancing to an outdoor concert (cold!) with crazy Austrians in Salzburg on New Year's Eve 2002
39. Rocking to an Audioslave concert with Tony and then driving home while he slept
40. Catching my first salmon with Tony and Liz
41. Watching Tony reel in a 12-foot sturgeon
42. Naked hot-tubbing outside our cabin at Lake Chelan on our first anniversary
43. Drinking and staying out until 4 am the night before Tony's graduation
44. Dancing with Tony at Sarah's wedding
45. Sitting on the beach late at night with Tony, Monica, and Jeremy while Tony played guitar and sang, before we started dating
46. When Tony asked me if he could "call me sometime"
47. Teaching my French friends the term "sausage fest" at their all-boys school party
48. Playing caps in the dorm in Nantes
49. Drinking hot coffee to cool down in 100-degree weather in Athens
50. Scuba diving with a giant Manta Ray in Hawaii
51. The quote board, and how it made us laugh
52. Sandwiching the guy dressed as a nun on Halloween with Heidi
53. All the times Tony makes me laugh SO HARD on car rides
54. Being toured around Fairbanks by my mom after we buried grandma
55. Picking oysters from the rocks with Alain
56. The phone calls Leland used to make when I was a senior in college- when it was 11 am for him but 8 am for me on a Sunday, when he knew I'd been out the night before
57. Pounding shots with Mer H after our dates stood us up at My-Tie
58. Trudging through a massive downpour in our bathing suits in Bali with Tony, Mer, and Jer
59. Visiting a cave in Bordeaux with my parents and translating such lovely expressions as "wine thief" to the short, round winemaker with the distinctly French mustache
60. Driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the narrow roads of England with my dad
61. Skydiving tandem with a guy who had to remind me to breathe during the freefall
62. Staying out all night in Barcelona with Maggi
63. Picking out Buster at the shelter and taking him home- he earned his name on the 15-minute drive as he spazzed out in the car
64. The first time Tony said "I love you"
65. The first day of college
66. Convincing the pledges to steal back the donkey and then hiding empty beer cans in the chapter room (God, that pissed Shana off)
67. The Restaurant of DOOOOOOOOM
68. Being shown my brother in the hospital nursery but not being able to pick him out of the many babies there
69. Studying with Mer in the library so late that we came up with ridiculous poems about Oompa-Loompas
70. Celebrating Valentine's Day with a gift of wine glasses and wine at lunch (how risque-- we both went back to work!!!) from Tony and nudie photos from me :-)
71. Rollerblading and ALMOST DYING several times at the Port of Bellingham
72. Playing hose games with Buster in the yard
73. Tony teaching me to golf at the ghetto course in Bellingham
74. Visiting my brother in Hillsdale
75. Dance lessons with Tony, reaffirming that I am the uncoordinated one
76. Cruising Long Beach with Monica blasting Rick Springfield
77. Walking through the crowded Christmas Market is Strasbourg with the Cauets
78. Speaking at my high school graduation
79. Partying with Jernej in Slovenia and then throwing up into a storm drain in a crowded open-air market the next day
80. Watching the sun rise from a boat in the Galapagos
81. Making myself carsick spinning out and learning to correct in a bald-tire truck at Laguna Seca Raceway
82. Holding my grandma's hand and knowing that when I was saying "I love you" that I also meant "goodbye"
83. Doing "laps" in our cars around the big buoys on the Bolstad approach
84. Visiting Mont Ste Michelle with my mom, a place she "thought she'd never see"
85. Dissolving into peals of laughter with Pascale and Meredith as the effects of our sleepless nights took their toll-- we were PAM
86. Watching my brother begin his new business, full of excitement and pride
87. Riding the giant metal driftwood horse, only to watch helplessly as Liz fell of and then laugh, laugh, laugh (was there an entire bottle of tequila consumed that night between me, Liz, and Mer? Yes. Yes there was.)
88. Watching Tony's mom earn the respect of all the thugs at a Seahawks game for being the loudest one there
89. Playing in the snow on Hurricane Ridge with Tony after Thanksgiving in Sequim
90. Swimming in Lake Whatcom when it was really hot
91. Riding on the back of my dad's motorcycle on Christmas day
92. Watching my mom get all "in-charge" at the Kite Festival with her sunglasses, her visor, and her radio :-)
93. The amazing and exhausting house-warming party we threw last summer that ended so, so late
94. When Tony drunkenly told me we should get married, months before he actually popped the question
95. Seeing that naked guy just walking along the road in Mexico while with a busload of teenagers I was supposed to be chaperoning
96. Watching a drive-in movie, all bundled up in the back of the pickup with Tony
97. That year I collected weird classified ads, including one for a 2500-lb meteor
98. Our entire wedding day
99. The time I couldn't eat Christmas dinner with the family because they had cooked crab and Tony's dad watched TV with me for a couple hours in the basement
100. Mixing Pink Ladies with my mom and deciding that, while they were quite glamorous, the egg white made it taste a little gross