A (Run-On) Sentence for Every Year

People have tagged me for memes, and I can never seem to do them because I just draw a blank. I like reading other people's though. I thought I'd try Shannon's Sentence for Every Year meme, though. It seems pretty open ended, so I should be able to come up with something.

1. I was born over 4 weeks overdue in Council Bluffs, Iowa, apparently causing permanent damage to my mother's reproductive organs.
2. I had my first eye surgery and got my first glasses.
3. My mom made a deal with me that if I got myself potty trained by such and such a date, I could go to Disneyland, and I went to Disneyland.
4. I had been going to my babysitter since I was about 6 weeks old, but this is the year I really remember just hanging out all day playing and having absolutely no responsibilities for likely the last year ever.
5. I went to Kindergarten and started slipping up and not following directions and they found out I had a hearing impairment.
6. I couldn't figure out how to do a subtraction worksheet using a number line and the teacher made me do it over and over again without showing me that I was one number off every time so I had my first public shit fit and walked out of the class to the nurses office.
7. I had my first crush on Bill Vandenberg and had my first fight over him with Dawn Bronco--neither of us got him; it was the second grade.
8. I was sick a lot and ended up in the hospital for a while and ended up having 62 pages of make-up work when I came back which led to my second little public shit fit, which led to my first IEP.
9. My teachers insisted that I use large-print books, but the books were so large that the top of the page was so far away that I couldn't see it so regular books were easier but my opinion didn't matter.
10. I played matchmaker and got my teacher for the vision impaired and my 5th grade math teacher married and was invited to their wedding.
11. My family moved to a sorta upscale suburb in Omaha, Nebraska and I faced culture shock, which along with my coke bottle glasses made me the girl everybody hated, except for (Bless Her HEART) Mardra Wright.
12. I became friends with all the other special ed kids in junior high and had a load of fun every day with them, but didn't want to admit to anyone that they were my peeps, because I wasn't really a special ed kid.
13. I skipped class (which I had been doing since the fourth grade) and got caught for the first time and got two Saturday detentions which I thought would ruin my entire life but ultimately it didn't matter beyond the eighth grade.
14. I woke up one day and could not see out of my left eye and had to spend a month in a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee lying flat on my back.
15. After consistently doing poorly in math for years and almost never doing my math homework because I couldn't see the board or even when the teacher would write on a piece of scratch paper, my friend Cheryl taught me the FOIL method for algebra by writing in big marker on a white board and I found out that maybe I really wasn't that dumb.
16. I joined debate, rifle squad and yearbook staff and finally high school actually seemed like it might not be a total waste of my time.
17. Every day of my last semester of senior year I would go to school to find out if one of my friends had her baby yet, how another one was doing in her bone marrow transplant, and how another one was doing in trying not to commit suicide.
18. I went to blind rehab which taught me that "its respectable to be blind", went to college, lost my virginity, was sexually assaulted by a Marine, and lost my mother's support.
19. I moved Curtis, Nebraska to have a place to live and to babysit for my boyfriend's little sister, then to Lincoln, Nebraska and, with the help of vocational rehabilitation, managed to go to college and live independently.
20. I moved into my first apartment (Section 8), worked for my first family with a severely disabled child and found out how much you can fall in love with a severely disabled child, and hung out with all my blind friends.
21. I became pregnant and had a miscarriage and broke up with my boyfriend of three years.
22. I had developed a pretty thriving business taking care of disabled children who could not find childcare anywhere else as I continued college.
23. I got a guide dog, met Nik at guide dog school and then lost him, was told by my college that I couldn't student teach even though I had above average grades, went to every principle in Lincoln until I found one that would let me student teach, received an outstanding student teacher award, graduated college, worked at a grocery store in lieu of a teaching job, got every interview I applied for (where I didn't disclose disability) and then got treated more rudely than I have ever been treated in my life at job interviews.
24. I moved to Lawrence, Kansas and started graduate school, met D, and got really sick with kidney disease but found out how little you can do when you are sick with no health insurance.
25. I went to a Lollapalooza concert with D and his brother Q, got waaaay too drunk and stoned, had some kind of out of nowhere sexual assault PTSD freakout episode all over Q, and figured out I'd better be taking care of my head on that one right quick.
26. I took care of my head and my health, but then my best friend, Susan, died unexpectedly.
27. I wrote my entire Master's thesis in about three weeks and had a magnificently great oral defense, got my master's degree, and moved to Oregon and started substitute teaching where I would just show up with a guide dog and people had to deal because there was no one else which helped me gain some fans.
28. I got my first "real" job and had fun traveling a lot for work, and got back into skating, started having horrible pains in my left side that every doctor ignored.
29. I started dating the professor and as soon as he moved to Portland I was finally diagnosed with grape sized kidney stones (that had grown since they were left untreated in Kansas), I had a series of five surgeries and one emergency room visit that proved too much for the professor and he split.
30. I decided that I was going to have a child by the time I was 35 and began a plan to make that happen, which affected every decision I made from that point on.
31. Nik and I found each other after 8 years apart but we weren't meant to be a couple--luckily we were meant to be great friends.
32. D became deathly ill and I moved in with him and worked three jobs; the one at the university, the one at the children's hospital, and the one where I took care of D almost 24 hours a day.
33. My mother was diagnosed with Cancer and died later that year, I was diagnosed with PCOS and thought my having children was out the window, I slowed everything down and concentrated extensively on my mother and my health, I also lost two of my jobs that year, around the same time I got pregnant.
34. Pregnant, I moved in to my father's house, had another retinal detachment and lost much of my vision, watched my in-laws ditch me, and then became a mother to two beautiful little boys.
35. Except for D's returned osteomylitis, which had been nice enough to remiss for a couple of years, I had a wonderful year being a mom and settling in to my new community.
36. I'll let you know in June!

I want to mention here that when I look back on all of this, a lot of it seems bad, but my life has not been all so bad. I think what it is, is that when I think of specific years, I can remember these specific events. If you asked me to write 35 wonderful things that happened to me, I could do that as well, but probably couldn't break them down by year in this way. They are more vague in my head as to when they happened. But they did happen. Maybe I'll do that as a part two.

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In other news, I'm going to cut my hair short. I'm warning anyone in my real life now that I'm going to do this. It's really not a big deal to me, but it seems to be to everyone else. But I've been pony-tailing it for two years now, and I have the type of hair that you either have to spend 45 minutes a day defrizzing, or just ponytail it. And so what's the diff if I cut it all off? I'm going Miranda from 1st season  Sex in the City short. I dream of being able to just take a shower and be done. And if I hear any derogatory lesbian comments (which is what I've gotten the last few times I've chopped my hair) I'm locking whoever says it into a small room for thirty days with only Twisty from "I blame the patriarchy" to read, or whatever else I decide is required reading. Don't give me any sexist bullshit about my hair. Now I'm done.

My short hair will be just in time for me to teach a Sunday School unit (at *ugh* the early service) that I've got coming up. Every Sunday for the next 2 months, I'm lead teaching. It takes me about three hours to get myself and the kids up and Sunday dressed and breakfasted and walked to the church in time. And I want to cut that down by at least an hour. If I cut 45 minutes of hair out and maybe 15 minutes of running around by prepping everything the night before, I may have a chance in hell of getting to class on time and actually being nice when I get there.

The unit I'll be teaching is pretty interesting. It is called "UU Superheroes." Every week we will talk about a famous Unitarian Universalist and apply it to one of the seven principles. The most difficult challenge of my particular class is that I have four year olds to ten year olds and I have to make it appropriate for all of them. And some of it is a bit heady. We're talking about people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Clara Barton, and Walt Whitman. So I have a lot of prepping to do to find different ways to apply it to each age group. But I'm looking forward to having a big project. I love my time with my toddlers but there is only so much stimulation that comes from stacking blocks all day, you know?

Comments

[shannon]

Most excellent, Lisa.

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I am picturing Ralph Waldo Emerson in a red cape...

[panasianbiz]

I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. I found your list fascinating, and some of your accomplishments are truly spectactular, such as writing your master's thesis in only three weeks. As I hold several graduate degrees myself, I am in awe of how you managed this feat. Bravo!

[Lisa]

Well, to be fair, I did about 9 months of research and prep work on my thesis, but when it came down to finally writting the finished product, I wrote it (about 150 pages) in three weeks.

I have always been able to write very fast, and although my thesis was turned in with 0 grammatical, spelling, etc. errors, my blog writing does not have the same standard of accuracy. But I still write it very fast, which makes some entries longer than I intended.