I put off writing the ABOUT ME section of my blog for a long time. Partly because the Me changes so often. Partly because I don’t know how to stop once I start writing (especially about Moi). I tried to write a bio-type blurb and 5 pages of narcissistic crap came out. So I started a memoir.

In the meantime I feel like I owe my visitors some semblance of imagery for the girl who spews a lot of randomness (yes I still call myself a girl). But it’s this collection of notated randomness that has defined the life I’ve lived so far and the opinions I’ve crafted so far. I change as life changes.

That said, I’m adding a disclaimer that this document is organic, dynamic and guaranteed to change.

So until my scandalous revealing book comes out, here is an arbitrary list of things ABOUT ME:

1. I have a six-year-old son who is the love of my life. He calls me the life of his love. I call that success.
2. My favorite number is 8. 2008, however was one of the hardest years of my life. Go figure.
3. My mother, father and I immigrated to Queens in 1979 via Austria and Italy. It sounds glamorous but it was far from it.
4. Forest Hills, Queens was my first American home. Had I went to high school there, I would have gone to the same high school as Simon and Garfunkel. Instead we moved to Staten Island. No one famous went to Susan Wagner High School but I think we had a kick-ass football team. I wouldn’t know; I didn’t participate much in the whole high school thing.
5. I was afraid of dogs as a child. My father forced me to get over it. Then he got me a dog for my 12th birthday. A mastiff. She weighed 155 pounds – which is right about what I weighed in high school (I’m 5’2″).
6. I have lost 35 pounds since then. Mostly because I stopped eating Peanut M&Ms and Bar Nones (now only made in Mexico) for lunch. I also stopped having platters after school. Platters were a plate of full fat tortilla chips covered in about half a block of Cracker Barrel cheddar cheese. Nuked for a minute. Deliciousness. But no more. I also started moving off the couch.
7. The entire time I lived in Staten Island my father owned and operated a donut shop. It was called Time Out for Donuts. It was a bit of a misnomer since we served eggs, hamburgers and hot turkey sandwich-like stuff too. Yes, this could have contributed to the 35 extra pounds.
8. My Russian name sounds like I’m a famous ballerina. My mother, however, clearly brought us up with the notion that being a ballerina was the most far-fetched idea in the world. For example, “____. Yeah, and I’m a ballerina.”
9. I unconditionally love New York City. I like to think it’s mutual.
10. When I think of favorite TV shows, I still think back to Family Ties, China Beach and thirtysomething. I love a good medical drama but I don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy. I stopped at the ninth season of er. Not sure why I never got hooked on the kids stuff.
11. I don’t like shoes. All the pretty ones are uncomfortable. I’m holding a grudge.
12. I’m not sure why women buy lots of purses. I think it’s annoying to constantly repack the purse.
13. I don’t like to keep things in my pockets.
14. I love make up. I wear mostly black clothing but get rainbowlicious with eye make up – all Mac, nothing but Mac.
15. My son attends a fancy private school in Manhattan. I don’t fit in with the mommies. In his preschool class I was the only divorced parent. I’m waiting for the fourth grade when I heard it balances out.
16. I don’t like mustard or butter, although I will use butter in baking, I will never put it on bread.
17. I have been a fishetarian for the last 16 years.
18. I learned to order food from Sally in When Harry Met Sally.
19. I have two visible scars. One on my neck from a partial thyroidectomy and one on my philtrum from when my dog barked at me and my face got in the way. To her defense I was hitting her on the nose with a silly putty egg she had stolen from me. Also to her defense, she was groggy from medicine. To my defense, it was 12 stitches and it’s my FACE!
20. I have two tattoos (scars by choice, I like to say). One on my lower back – a sun with a Chinese character in the middle that means big sister. Within the rays of the sun are my initials and my sister’s initials. She has an identical tattoo with the exception of her middle symbol which means little sister. My second tattoo is on my UPA (Upper P***y Area), left side; a low bikini shows half of it. It’s a lyrical heart that doesn’t close entirely at the bottom. My son’s initials are at the bottom. Both tattoos are black, red and yellow.
21. I doodle a lot. I like to think that I’m an artist that never learned to draw so I doodle letters, words, interlocking squares, my name.
22. Penmanship was my favorite subject. In high school I got a typing award. I still like my handwriting, but I prefer to type.
23. I love non-ballpoint colored pens. Pink, purple, green – anything other than boring black.
24. I guiltlessly love the smell of rubber cement.
25. I hope to one day do the Amazing Race with my sister.
26. I spent the last 4+ years working for a recruitment advertising agency. It’s just like a regular advertising agency, except instead of promoting Coca Cola as a great soda, we promote a company as a great place to work. What this means is that we wrote fancy help wanted ads for jobs no one wanted. We also gave a lot of money to Monster and CareerBuilder on our clients behalf.
27. The job, however, that prepared me most for life – and interacting with people – was working at the donut shop from the time I was 12 to when I went to college. I hated every day of it. I did, however, learn to make awesome home fries and perfect eggs over easy. I also learned to always say THANK YOU to customers. To this day, I maintain that a coffee regular is milk and two sugars.
28. If money were no object, I would travel around the world taking photos, writing and getting massages every week.
29. I would also have a personal shopper because I hate to shop.
30. I was born in the year of the Tiger and I’m a Leo but I hate cats. This may have been my first indicator of a life plagued with irony.
31. I’m a pretty technologically savvy gal but my DVD player has been blinking 12:00 since last year’s blackout.
32. I rock at Tetris. Not sure if the Russian has anything to do with it.
33. I started seeing hearts everywhere a few years ago. Maybe it was because I was in love, maybe because I just started seeing everything more clearly and the hearts stood out. I thought how wonderful that humans are in love with love. Thus www.heartseverywhere.com.
34. I am looking for a dream job. Step one: define it. Step two: create it.

To see the full list of 60 so far, click here.