age meme

ursule gave me 10. Let me know if you'd like an age of your own (and tell me a maximum, if you don't want an age in the future!)

10 was the year we moved, from good-sized suburb Waukesha to small-town Marshfield.

Then:

I lived in:
The only house I'd ever lived in, the house my parents moved in to on my due date (mom said it was the most relax move of her life, all she did was sit in the rocking chair and direct), the house with the yellow door that everyone in our neighborhood gave directions via, the house with trees planted when I was born, that I had my picture taken next to every year.

I drove:
My bike, but never very far. It was pink, had a basket on the front with plastic flowers on it, and beads on the spokes that rattled as I rode.

I was in a relationship with:
I think this was the year that I decided that I wasn't actually Sara, but I was really Legolas's younger sister, trapped in a foreign world, seeking for a way to get back.

I feared:
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I didn't fear the unknown, I didn't fear creepy crawlies, I didn't fear death, I didn't fear uncertainty. That summer I spent so much time in the big field behind the houses across the street from ours, hours upon hours with so much scope for the imagination; at the end of the summer, I remember pausing, and thinking back on it, that it was the best summer I had ever had. It actually remained in that place for a very long time, and still has some claim to being the best summer ever, because it was not only a happy summer, it wasn't fogged by any of the things that creep into your happiness as you get older.

I worked at:
Let's see, I would've been in 5th grade at the start of the year, and 6th at the beginning of fall, after we moved.

I wanted to be:
A paleontologist or a mailman (because I collected stamps and loved names, and delivering mail would let me see lots and lots of neat stamps and names). This was the year that I discovered the list of 100 most popular boys and girls names in the two-volume World Book Dictionary we had, which is the direct causal event for my love of names.

Now:

I live in:
Durham, England, with one husband, one kid, and three cats. A 1-1 correspondence between people and cats is a good balance, and since 3 cats is sometimes about 5 too many, we'd better not have any more kids.

I drive:
Nothing! It has become a smug badge of honor, that between us Joel and I have 69 years of non-car-ownership. My bike hasn't been out of the shed since we moved a year ago; there are too many hills and not enough bike lanes.

I'm in a relationship with:
My husband.

I fear:
That Gwen will one day lose her light. (The other day walking to nursery, she went skipping past the plumbing store on the corner, singing and laughing and dressed with her own inimitable style, and the owner who was receiving a delivery smiled at us and said he hoped she never lost her happiness as she grew up. What a wonderful thing to say).

That I won't have learned enough from my first year here to make the appropriate changes going forwards and I'll suffer another teaching disaster.

Referee reports. Even when I open the email and can see the "accepted" or "to be published" in the first few lines, even when I know they'll be saying positive things, I can't stand reading the reports. They generally sit unread for 1-2 weeks after arrival before I can get to work on any revisions.

I work at:
Durham University.

I want to be:
Less tired. More patient. Successful in my upcoming grant application. Less scared of referee reports. A world-famous logician and/or onomast. Moved into our new house and out of the old one. Possessed of a fortune that will allow me to buy all the books I want, regardless of cost.