I can't think of a clever title

So I didn't get tagged, but I'm doing this meme anyway, seen at Ramona's: Describe your life in five-year intervals counting backward from 2007. So that means every year ending in 2 or 7.

1982: I was three. We lived in Reisterstown, Maryland; we had a long-haired cat named Fuzzy; my mom was pregnant with my sister Katie. My older sister and the boy down the street cut off my pigtails. I think we were co-flower girls in a wedding. I went to pre-school and learned to swim this year. The parents in my playgroup nicknamed me Bubbling White Sugar, which if you ask me is not much of a nickname since it's longer than my actual name.

1987: I was eight. Fuzzy died when I was seven and we got a new cat, Heather, who was a one-person cat. And I was her person. She slept on my bed every night and came when I called her and even met me at the bus-stop after school. Heather died when I was sixteen and I still get all choked up about her. My teacher this year was Mrs. Gede, who is my favorite teacher ever. She had to teach us a health unit and said that she could choose between teaching us about nutrition or about drugs. She chose drugs, because her teenaged son had been an addict and killed himself. It was pretty heavy stuff to tell third-graders, but I liked that she did it. As a teenager, whenever I misbehaved, I felt like I was letting down Mrs. Gede as well as my parents. So I didn't misbehave much.

1992: I was thirteen. Yuck. I played field hockey and read a lot.

1997: Like Ramona, I had a car with a name. Mine was Frankie the Ford Festiva, named after Frankie Avalon. I took a notoriously bad curve a little too wide one day, hit gravel, overcorrected, and shot across the road and off the other side and into a garage owned by, as luck would have it, my fifth grade math teacher. Frankie was totaled. Because I hit a building.

2002: I was 23 and had lived in New Mexico for one year. I was in grad school and hating it. That summer I spent on an archaeological survey at Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert, hottest place in the U.S. I got paid the best hourly rate I've ever gotten to hike and look for artifacts in temperatures upwards of 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say, I was in the best shape of my life. And dammit, I have no pictures!

2007: I'll be 28 next month and I'm leaving for Japan May 8th. I'm sorting through all my belongings trying to figure out what I like enough to ship home to store at my parents, what I love enough to ship to Japan, and what I just don't care about and can give to Goodwill. I have a a 20 x 20 x 12 inch box of yarn and WIPs to be sent to Japan. And I'm still buying stuff--I found my 2006 birthday present from my friends Amy and Shamsi, a gift certificate to Village Wools, and I had to run up there and spend it. I spent wisely though--I got yarn for a Hello Yarn Cycling Aran for my dad and for Grumperina's Shifting Sands scarf for my brother-in-law-to-be. Because the more Christmas gifts I can finish before I go, the less I ultimately have to pay in shipping.