This was meant to be 100 things about me...

but seeing as I'm a chronic over-achiever, its currently at 116. It's changed a lot just in its compilation, so don't take this as gospel.

1. I am 32 years old. I was born on 8 December 1972. Sagittarius is the best star sign of the zodiac.
2. I’ve been married to Chef for 8 years. We’ve been together for 14 years.
3. I was born and mostly raised in Sydney.
4. We lived in Waco, Texas for about 2 years from when I was about 18 months old.
5. My first home was a house Mum and Dad built in Albury.
6. I am adopted.
7. I have three children, one has special needs due to a rare genetic disorder.
8. My parents are divorced
9. 6 through 8 have been life-changing, personality shaping events that cannot be overestimated.
10. My parents separated just before I turned 12 and were divorced just before I was 14.
11. My birth parents live within a 15 minute radius of our house. I look a lot like my natural mother and have the temperament of my natural father. I wish I saw them both more often.
12. I once saw my mum hold a rusty knife to her neck and in howling sobs threaten to kill herself as we packed up our house as part of the divorce settlement. So I ran away. To the end of the street. And hid in the bushes, watching her drive around screaming for me frantically.
13. My parents divorce largely shaped who I am today in that it generated a fierce desire to be liked, to be good and to be the best.
14. But it also taught me about being a fair and decent person and that there are always two sides to every single story.
15. I have an adopted brother with whom I have nothing in common. He once voted for the Shooters Party. He is a complete mystery to me.
16. I have experienced significant self esteem issues throughout my life. It has only been in the last three years, with a lot of therapy, that I have been able to leave them behind. For the first time in my life, I can honestly say I really like who I am – although I’m sure I’d like even more and be an even better person if I was 10 kilos lighter. And went to the gym.
17. From Years 8 through 12 I was bulimic. Then again quite recently.
18. Because of 17, I am a dentist’s wet dream. I’ve had three root canals, need three crowns and avoid the dentist at all costs because of the cost…and the pain. Every tooth that could have a filling does.
19. My husband was my second boyfriend.
20. We’ve been together since I was 18.
21. We have three sons Oscar (7), Felix (5) and Jasper (1 month). I suspect I lack the ability to produce female offspring. This is not something I am sad about. On any level.
22. I am intent on raising sons who are happy, decent, honourable human beings who treat women with respect, love and a level of healthy adulation.
23. I get very very angry, upset and even lose sleep over political short-sightedness, obsessions about the economic bottom line with little regard for or indeed care about human lives.
24. The only thing that makes me angrier is discrimination because of your ability, intelligence, skin colour or sex.
25. Oscar’s the one with a rare genetic disorder. He has global learning delay, a profound speech disability and mild cerebral palsy. This has completely changed my place in the world.
26. Every single day I grieve for Oscar and the challenge that his life is/will be. Even though he rises to that challenge every single day with good humour, tenaciousness and a capacity to love that takes my breath away.
27. I absolutely hate the fact that every day I have to fight for Oscar for just basic rights that are naturally expended to the rest of us.
28. Sometimes the relentlessness of being a parent, and in particular being the parent to a special needs child, overwhelms me.
29. After Felix I had severe postnatal depression.
30. I have suffered depression for most of my life, at least back as far as I can remember.
31. There’s a tree on a road near our house that I would imagine driving into. I used to wonder what speed I’d have to travel to hit the tree hard enough to kill me but not damage the boys in the back.
32. That I could ever think like that still scares me.
33. I really really really want to be rich and famous.
34. My mum lives upstairs.
35. I used to think my mother was perfect. She is selfless, but in being so, is completely selfish. I don’t know how she does it.
36. I love to write. And write. And write.
37. There are lots of words in my head.
38. I love order.
39. I love hanging washing out, using two pegs of the same colour on an item of clothing.
40. Food groups have set shelves in our fridge. I am not obsessive about this, but will correct it all from time to time.
41. I have a photographic memory for every foodstuff in our pantry. And yes, that includes the herb and spice packets. This photographic memory does not extend into any other area of my life.
42. I like structure and routine almost as much as order. And then get freaked out by all three and try to live a life of spontaneity and risk-taking. Only to fail as I try and plan that as well.
43. Favourite foods include figs, cherries and stone fruit. I love good cheese, as in cheeses from Simon Johnson’s cheese room, but in particular goats cheese.
44. My favourite meals generally involve eating with my fingers and rolling things up – Vietnamese spring rolls, Peking duck pancakes, burritos, etc.
45. I hate sandwiches with loads of fillings.
46. I love anything with noodles in it – laksa, Singapore noodles, hokkien noodles, spaghetti.
47. I am currently addicted to couscous. This has been going on for several months, if not years.
48. I love bircher muesli.
49. I am a bit of a carbohydrate addict. This flies in the face of modern diet convention and does not comply with my active avoidance of exercise program.
50. You may have noticed that I love food. Cooking it, eating it, reading about it, and then eating more of it.
51. I am a really good cook but find having to think about what’s for dinner every.single.night. a big drag. So I write fortnightly dinner plans. This appeals to me. A lot.
52. My favourite things to cook at the moment are a lemon yoghurt cake, couscous with lashings of mint and coriander – and for lunch dump a can of Sirena Pesto tuna on top, and beef stir fry with shiitake mushrooms. Go Figure.
53. I am prone to lower back problems. I get sciatica all the time. I have it right now. It is really annoying.
54. I have ginormous breasts that have been with me since I was 10 and a half.56. I noticed them one day in Social Studies in fifth grade (1983) - when we were learning about Dirk Hartog and the pewter plate in Western Australia – when they got in the way as I tried to write.
55. I desperately wanted a training bra like every other girl. They didn’t come in my cup size. I made Mum buy me one anyway. I broke the strap on first wearing.
56. My first bras were therefore big, beige and ugly. They still are.
57. The first day I wore a bra, Dad came over. He pulled the back of it and flicked me, laughing that I had a bra. I was deeply humiliated and hurt. This was the nature of my relationship with him for many years.
58. I got my period on the 11th May 1984. I was 11yrs 5months old.
59. I didn’t shave my legs until Year 7, when Rebecca Johnson measured my leg hairs in maths.
60. The only times I’ve ever bled as much as I did after shaving my legs for the first time was every single period during the first two years of getting my period and after having Oscar.
61. I used to pluck my entire bikini line with tweezers.
62. I have quick labours – 3hr15mins for Oscar, 45 minutes for Felix, 35 minutes for Jasper (although I’d argue it was more like about 1hr35mins).
63. I dream of us, just us, living in a house, our house, all by ourselves. I know the reality of this is highly unlikely and that the convenience of having my mother live upstairs is something I intensely undervalue. Meanwhile, my children LOVE living with their grandmother, and I love that because I love the notion of what it would be to be a kid again and have my Nan upstairs rather than 2 hours drive away.
64. I love a wedge of lime in a glass of chilled tonic water.
65. I love Piper Heidsieck champagne and sparkling shiraz. I’ve very partial to a cocktail, in particular a cosmopolitan. I used to only drink red wine, but now prefer a clean, crisp and dry white. It has to be excruciatingly hot for me to drink an ice-cold beer. Even then I’ll drink about half and give the rest to Chef. I think I could very easily become an alcoholic.
66. I like the idea of pets. I find the reality of them highly irritating and inconvenient.
67. I am loud.
68. I tend to snort when I laugh and wee when I sneeze. I sneeze every day, about six times a go, at roughly 10.30am and 4.15pm.
69. I had my first kiss when I was fifteen. It turned out the guy was gay.
70. I had my first grope on my 18th birthday in a paddock with a guy who claimed to be his cousin - who was the smart and nice one.
71. I lost my virginity at 18 and was convinced I would fall pregnant and go to hell, and not necessarily in that order. Instead I just got raging thrush.
72. I've had one one night stand. He sung The Cure to me all night as he was so pissed he couldn't get it up. I still loved it. That was the most reckless I've ever been.
73. I've smoked a joint and inhaled. The first time it did nothing but singe my eyebrows. The second time caused a severe depression. The third time I ate my bodyweight in pork ribs and earned the nickname Dino.
74. I dream of being a size 12 and all that would come with such a clothing size – always looking good in photos, fame, money and happiness.
75. I make an awesome pavlova and it is my favourite dessert of all time. Although old fashioned trifle comes a very close second.
76. My kinda guy is of the Robbie Williams, Johnny Knoxville and Vince Vaughan mould – tall, dark, funny, wicked and just a bit unkempt.
77. I quite like shocking people or at least making them think about something in a different way from how they normally would.
78. I dream of eating out, at somewhere fancy, once a month.
79. I love going to the movies on my own, with the biggest bucket of popcorn imaginable.
80. When I’m not pregnant I get phantom baby kicks.
81. I love the fact I could (and am) breastfeeding my children – and how big and healthy they grow drinking solely from me.
82. If I had to choose – sorbet rather than ice cream, cup rather than cone, water rather than juice, wine over beer, porridge rather than eggs, pancakes with lemon juice and sugar rather than with maple syrup, savoury over sweet, vegies over meat, steak over chicken. Chips over corn chips. Lavosh over water crackers.
83. I hate people who say they have no regrets.
84. I intensely dislike people who don’t try or those who are just lazy.
85. My favourite colour is green. It used to be blue.
86. I’m currently loving music by Powderfinger and Coldplay.
87. My favourite movie at the moment is Napoleon Dynamite.
88. For me, a splurge is to buy Vanity Fair. I've never splurged that much and bought the air-freighted current issue though.
89. I try to dress in a funky off-beat manner, but instead always come back to Sportscraft and Simona even though our financial predicament means I should be at Target. I do have a fundamental belief in spend the money once, wear it for years. I learnt this from my mother. It annoys me.
90. I try and be more highbrow in what I like, how I dress and how I talk, but the reality is I am much more Family Circle than Vogue. This irritates me but also quietly pleases me, as an indication of my greater social conscience.
91. I’m both a worrier and an optimist. This comes from having a Henny Penny mother who is a worrier and an eternal pessimist. I am known to refer to her as the ‘voice of doom’.
92. I’m very aware of the power of the spoken word and how it can both lift the spirit or crush the soul.
93. I would love to have a house in Italy. I hope we will one day have the income and budget to travel.
94. I want to show my boys the world.
95. I love, absolutely love, shoes and yet don’t own that many.
96. I love the ocean but hate the sand.
97. I don’t tan. I burn. Then peel. Then peel some more.
98. One day we will own a holiday house.
99. I love having fresh flowers in the house but then they die and you have to deal with the stinky water, fallen petals and pollen. I find that painful.
100. I collect Fowler ware ceramic bowls and jugs. I went through a ramekin phase as well.
101. I have an addictive personality. I love lists. If I have a drink I’ll have ten. Why buy a small packet of chips when you could buy the jumbo pack? Ebay is a dangerous realm for me.
102. I carry all my weight on my stomach and arms. I have a great arse and legs.
103. I love winter. I yearn to live somewhere where it snows. Properly snows. Everyone who does live somewhere it snows tells me it’s a drag and overrated. I think 30C heat and 98% humidity is overrated.
104. I have every intention of learning how to sew.
105. I would love to do a patchwork quilt, but know I don’t have the attention span to make it happen.
106. When I was little I wrote my acceptance speech for when I would win an Oscar.
107. I still wish I were an actress.
108. I have quite a puritanical streak. When I was little I used to tie rulers to the back of my dolls to make them stand up straight. When I was a school prefect I was hated because I gave out blue slips to anyone, even girls in my year, who didn’t have their hat on outside school grounds.
109. I am a big nerd. But never got the grades to prove it.
110. I start lots of things and finish very few. I find this highly irritating.
111. I would love to build a house on a headland.
112. I come from a really large family but have no real desire to stay in touch with any of them.
113. My friends are my real family.
114. My girl friends are my foundation. I love them to the core of my soul and cannot imagine my life without them.
115. I don’t tell them all that often enough.
116. I love that life is a world of possibilities.
117. I hate the phone. Hate answering it, hate it ringing. Badness is the phone. Think this and multiply it by a bazillion for what I think about mobile ones.