That girl

In a conversation with a friend last night I caught myself saying "Yes, I'm *that* girl, but I don't know what *that* kind of girl is."

I've been thinking about this on and off today, and realize that I DO have a pretty good idea about what kind of girl I am.

I'm the girl who frequently puts the needs of others ahead of her own. I'm the girl who doesn't really do anything half-assed, whether that's work or hobbies or relationships or down-time. I'm the girl who sometimes starts projects but gets distracted with other projects and it takes a year or so to finish up that crazy scarf!

I'm the girl who loves things so much that she names them and tries to remember to take a picture for later. The girl who loves so much that her heart breaks over and over again. The girl who cries every time she goes to her Longmont house and stops by the spot where her Nemo cat is buried. The girl who cries at beginnings and at endings of all kinds of things.

I'm the girl who loves her country so much that she votes AND works at the polls and got excited about jury duty. I'm the girl who also sometimes goes to city council meetings, marches in protests and writes her congress-people. I'm the girl who likes to follow the rules and will also work to change them when the rules aren't good. I'm the girl who went on strike twice and was the one with the bullhorn turning around teamsters the second time around. I'm the girl who became management and had the good boundaries to not say encourage or discourage the employees who came asking for advice about going on strike.

I'm the girl who loves food but sometimes gets busy with other things and forgets to eat. I'm the girl who thinks tomatoes out of season are one of the most abysmal things to eat. I'm the girl who thanks the Universe regularly for her lactose tolerance. I'm the girl who keeps a graph paper lined lab notebook in the kitchen to document her cheese-making experiments. I'm the girl who makes lists on paper and uses Excel for things like travel packing lists. I'm the girl who eats dark chocolate and doesn't bother with milk chocolate if there's a choice. I'm the girl who keeps a jar on her desk with both kinds of chocolate to lure in all kinds of chocolate-cravers to say hello.

I'm the girl who walks between worlds, who shape-shifts, who knows how to blend in and who knows how to stand out. I'm the girl who trusts her brain more than she trusts her body and frequently trips over things when she doesn't watch the ground. I'm the girl who sinks instead of floats but will occasionally take a bath because the probability of drowning is manageable. I'm the girl who likes numbers. I'm the girl who has a lot of numbers in her head and dates and phone numbers and names. I'm the girl who is pretty sure she's still got a lot of physics constants in her head, but isn't quite sure if that's the mass or the charge on the electron she's seeing. I'm the girl who used to know the difference between grad, div and curl and how to use them but doesn't really remember vector calculus anymore.

I'm the girl who takes on leadership roles and avoids leadership roles and then takes them on again. I'm the girl who started a chapter of Society of Physics Students at her undergrad institution and the girl who started one and advised it at UCSD. I'm the girl who stopped writing to go online to see if either still exists and squealed with delight when she looked at their websites. I'm the girl who is trying really hard not to get sucked into becoming the president of the board next year. I'm the girl who is working with the President and Senior VPs at work on tracking the rollout of the strategic plan.

I'm the girl who has on her whiteboard at work the following:
"Let's be specific about our needs and wants and then we can better manage our expectations." PB
"Students ARE the mission"
"Infiltrate!"
"Grateful not Grumpy"
And who listens to her ipod on "shuffle" just so she can giggle when the music shifts from Kiss to Yo-Yo Ma to Rage Against the Machine to Frank Sinatra to The Cure.

I'm the girl who has been knee-deep in irrigation water, up to her elbow inside an alpaca's womb, and in over her head in a few situations. I'm the girl who's been in a hot air balloon, a helicopter, a biplane, and a variety of other small aircraft. I'm the girl who's been on an elephant in St. Louis and a camel in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. I'm the girl who still considers getting a 350+ pound llama to trust her enough to let her walk up and put a halter on as one of her greatest life achievements.

I'm the girl who sometimes is ranty and sometimes is melodramatic and sometimes is loquacious and sometimes is quiet and sometimes hiccups like a loud dying goose. And sometimes has run-on sentences. And sometimes has sentence fragments. I'm the girl who likes to run in the snow with her arms wiggling above her head like Kermit the Frog.

I'm the girl who is all this and more and is still just Jennie.