7 Random Things About Me

We've been tagged by Urban Pedestrian for this meme. As always, I'll expect Lori to do her own when she gets home.

1. I'm a high school dropout with a Master's degree.

2. I hate movie theaters and stage productions with a white-hot passion. The prospect of being trapped in that chair for two hours is only slightly preferable to having my fingernails pulled out with pliers.

3. I've lived in both Arizona and Washington, and never found a reason to go to California. The only other state in the continental U.S. I've never been to is Maine.

4. I'm meticulous at my job, but slovenly at home.

5. I've hiked hundreds of miles of the Appalachian Trail in my lifetime, but rarely walk any farther than the distance to my truck and back.

6. I had a peanut butter and honey sandwich and a can of V-8 for lunch every single day for 5 years when I worked for the Forest Service. I haven't had either in the 10 years since.

7. I still remember the birthdays of every single person I've ever known in my life, including Kerry McDonald, my next door neighbor when I was 4. All except my ex, Carol, who I lived with for 7 years. I think it's sometime in June.

I don't actually know 7 people to tag, so my truncated list is:

Suzanne at C.U.S.S.
Carrie at This Poor Vegan
Cedar at Cedarflame

The people I wish had a blog, so I could know 7 random facts about them:

1. Marl
2. Robin (I know everything about her life up until about 1995, and not much after.)
3. My dad
4. My brother Daniel

The rest of you: start a blog, so I can tag you too. Except my Dad, who still hadn't figured out the Internet the last time I talked to him, 4 years ago, and my brother Daniel, who dropped off the face of the earth right after the Christmas of 1987. I don't hold out much hope for either of them.




Kwachie's Turn:

1. After 12 years of classical piano lessons, 8 years of music theory lessons and 2 years of jazz piano instruction, I completely lost the ability to play by ear. Now I can't sit down at a piano and play a single thing anyone would want to hear at a party.

2. I'm frog-phobic. Two years ago, if there was a frog anywhere in my vicinity I'd scream, cry, or both. Ev has been patiently helping me get over it for the past year and a half by catching tiny frogs and holding them so I can look at them and touch them. Two weeks ago I voluntarily petted a small toad in the front yard unassisted.

3. This will be my 53rd Thanksgiving and, although I've eaten and/or hostessed the traditional turkey and dressing dinner every year, I've never cooked a turkey.

4. I love to go out dancing and I'm secretly disappointed that Ev doesn't dance and envious of people who do.

5. One of my best vacation memories is a trip I took to Oregon about five years ago. I flew to Portland, rented a car and drove to Newport to spend a week at the Sylvia Beach Hotel. It's a funky old hotel dedicated to books and people who love them. Every room is named after a famous author and decorated to represent them. I stayed in the Hemingway room (lots of dead animals on the walls) and read through all the journals compiled by guests over the years. It was a cold, stormy week and I spent it driving up and down the coast sightseeing in the rain, exploring tide pools and walking on the beach, prowling little shops and bookstores, eating clam chowder at Mo's and hardly talking to another living soul. I'd love to take the same vacation again, but with Ev this time. She'd love the Sylvia Beach. This time I want to stay in the Mark Twain room ... it has a fireplace, a clawfoot tub and it's own balcony overlooking the ocean.

6. I've licked my cat.

7. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

I know, I know...I suck as a blogger.

We're busy, busy, busy these days so I'm not blogging the way I'd like to. I'm still thinking about stuff, but unless I can blog them with my mind control from the car, I'm pretty much dead in the blog-water these days.

What happens to a family's dynamic when the grown children are back in the house?

In my family, there's a lot of teasing, a lot of trying not to offend, and a little bit of "see how good I've grown up." There's a lot of turf war between sisters, but not with mom. Like Melvin the cat...I'm the alpha. All it takes it the Raised Eyebrow of Doom to convince them that civility is the preferred method of communication. Luckily, they're generally nice people, with a healthy fear of their mother...still.

And they have grown up good. Caustically funny, attractive, cat-loving young people. What more could a mother ask for?

Maybe another bedroom or two.

I can imagine what it's like for Lori to be surrounded by all of us in all our bitchy sisterhood. I think I'd want to hide in the shed, too. But...well...she's stuck with us. You know..."better, worse, richer, poorer"? That thing? Sometimes we can wrap all the way around from better to worse (and richer to poorer) in nanoseconds. Some days we're just a transmission seal away from achieving Nerdvana.

But I still think of it as a victory. The glass IS half full. We still love each other, we still love the kids (we're not too crazy about the cats right now, but that'll pass), and we're shopping for cool kit houses that we can build ourselves our in the woods. Then we can live our dream of becoming crazy cat ladies dressed in 40 layers of outerwear, wandering the woods like a pair of Sasquatches.