Marilyn's List

1. I was named after a movie starlet (Monroe, natch) and a queen (Elizabeth, on whose birthday I was born).

2. I was almost born on Hitler's birthday, but thank goodness, I was a day late! Been late ever since! He-he...

3. I was a skateboarder when skateboards first came out, which wasn't much different than regular rolling skating down the neighborhood sidewalks, only like on a scooter without handles.  I wasn't very good at it.  I was pretty good at hula-hoops, though.  And pogo sticks.

4. I was a tomboy as a kid.  I crawled through sewers, climbed trees, and played tackle football with the boys.

5. I was a feminist as a teenager...in Texas in the 60's, where men always wanted to open the door for you.  I didn't let them.

6. I always planned on being an artist when I grew up. I decided when I was 5 years old I would go to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago when I grew up. I eventually did, though it took about 20 years extra long to get there.

7. I used to make all my own clothes...and some for other folks, too. Bridesmaids' dresses, even.

8. I wanted to be a beatnik when I was a kid; I used to wear my dad's big white shirts over my black tights and thought I was cool!  I then became a hippie at the earliest opportunity (even better).

9. I saw the Beatles live in Dallas when I was 12.

10. I saw Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix perform during the last year of their respective lives.  I went to rock concerts almost every weekend my senior year of high school. It seemed like every boy I dated for years was a musician, too.  I just wish I could sing...in key.

11. I once took apart 2 MGBGT's and swapped out the engines, transmissions, etc. to make one good car.  I then had to fix my own car for years after that! Bad idea!

12. I don't like grease under my nails and I don't like bloody knuckles.

13. I paid my own way through college -- all 300+ hours of it.  It was almost all undergraduate (I have 3 undergrad degrees).  My father had told me I wouldn't go to college, being a girl, you know.  Ha! I showed him!

14. I'm half-Lithuanian; I studied Lithuanian while I was going to art school in Chicago, went to Lithuanian camp once in Michigan, and then spent two months in Lithuania studying and traveling, and getting to know my grandfather's sister and other relatives.  My grandfather's sister developed cancer after I got there, and died the day after I left.  I'm so glad I got to meet her.  I never did meet my grandfather, though (he died when my mom was 13).

15. I used to lift weights 2 hrs. a night, 3 times a week.  I had the heart of an athlete, and pretty good muscles.  I felt good.

16. I met my husband through the Chronicle ads (weekly hip newspaper).

17. My husband and I had actually been in the same tiny room a month earlier at a SXSW party, but we didn't get introduced.  It took us a few months of dating to figure out why, when we met on our first date, we had looked familiar to each other.  A conversation about me being the icon maker at IBM was what finally snapped us to the circumstances of our previous almost-meeting.

18. I've studied many languages -- some more, some less (German, Lithuanian, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, and Chinese).  I can't speak any of them...much.  Nur ein bischen.  Tik truputi.  немного.  Un peu.  Un poco.  Un po'.  稍微  OK, I had to look up all but 2 of those.

19. My husband and I bought a house together with a 30-year mortgage before we ever decided to get married.

20. A year and a half after we bought our house my husband and I snuck off to a marriage by JP at Wooldridge Park on the winter solstice -- 3 weeks after he asked me to marry him.  We always meant to have a real wedding and reception within the next year or two, but it never happened.  Couldn't afford it.  Ain't that a bitch for a female child of the 50's!?

21. My teachers and parents thought I was some kind of a math genius when I was a kid.  Ho-hum.  It ain't art.  That's all I've got to say about that!

22. Most people think I'm terribly organized; I think I'm terribly disorganized.

23. My office is a black hole; what comes in doesn't go out and can never be found again!

24. Turns out I love science and history.  Who knew?

25. My retirement plan is to paint such beautiful, compelling paintings that many people "have to" buy them, thereby keeping me in groceries -- organic groceries, that is -- a studio, and all the normal comforts of an aging hippie artist in America.  Or more...