Day 8

Patient, patient people.

I forget now how I came to discover Sleepy Joe and her Life and Writings. She lives on the other side of the pond from me and works in one of the coolest fields, ever - library science. I have such respect and gratitude for librarians in general and it's somewhat akin to knowing a rock star to be associated with Sleepy Joe.

As if that weren't enough, she is a steady and constant presence on this blog with her constant encouragement and her unfailing loyalty to reading and commenting. She's an aspiring writer, herself, and leads a busy life with two little people and working full time and just generally being fabulous, yet she always finds the time to root for other writers and bloggers. That really means a lot. It takes some effort to reach out to other people and she does it anyway and is a cheerful presence here and on a lot of the blogs I read.

Over the last several weeks, she has gifted me with two different bits of blogging love. I have been woefully behind in catching up with all things blogging and they have slipped through the cracks. These little blog award thingies have been a delightful little surprise bonus to blogging. I'm not much one for memes, generally, but to have someone take the time to single out my ranting over here is touching to me and I really do appreciate it.

So, for you, Sleepy Joe, I am grateful. For my Wonderful Team Member Readership Award, because I am not a wonderful team member, actually. Writing is a generally solitary and lonely pursuit. I spend hours buried in things invisible to the naked eye. It is exhausting and exhilarating and it appears to waste a lot of time. In what other endeavor would you strive to eliminate at least 20% of the work you've done after you've done it? As a result, I get all down deep in my head and shut out the rest of the world. Writing is not a team sport. Blogging is, though. And I deeply appreciate my teammates. And for my Reader Appreciation Award.  It may seem from time to time that I do not appreciate my readers as much as I should. If appreciation is measured in mutual comments or responding promptly to Tweets and comments and Facebook notes, then I fail at this. If appreciation is measured in the thrill of seeing a familiar name on my stats and taking the time to really savor and consider the words that you've left behind, then there it is.

I encourage you to go check out Sleepy Joe's blog if you haven't already. She's really a shining light, the encouragement fairy, if you will. I am so grateful for her and all of the people like her who populate this world and make things just more pleasant. I am going to change the rules of all this up a bit. Instead of answering questions about myself, instead I'm going to ask you to leave your favorite thing about Sleepy Joe here in the comments. Let's fill her bucket at least half as much as she does for others.

Oh, You Are So It!

I play tag nearly every day. It usually involves a lot of shrieking and tackling of small children. Sleepy Joe from The Life and Writings of Sleepy Joe invited me to play tag with her. This is the kind of tag where I can sit comfortably in my pajamas and drink coffee. Nice.

Go check out Sleepy Joe. She's an aspiring writer like so many of us. She's so warm and witty. Plus she's got the best screen name, ever. And she's British, so you know, sexy.

Because there are not enough random facts about yours truly cluttering up the consciousness of far too many people, I am to list eleven facts about myself. Then I am to answer Joe's eleven questions. Then I am to tag some more people to answer eleven questions of my own devising.

You can listen to this song while you read.

Eleven titillating facts about Tangled Lou:

1. I fall in love about 100 times a day.
2. I am not much of a fidgeter.
3. I collect pens and coffee mugs. The cheaper and tackier, the better.
4. I also collect those smooshed pennies from tourist destinations. One day I want to cover a wall in my office with them, a glittering tribute to blatant merchandising and tourism.
5. I try not to say "I can't" when what I really mean is "I won't" or "I don't want to".
6. I fart a lot.
7. I almost stroked my neighbor's glorious lambchop sideburns yesterday.
8. Whenever people have those huge gauge grommets in their ears, I am tempted to stick my finger through them.
9. A cruise does not sound like a vacation to me. It sounds like torture.
10. Sometimes I eat random things I find.
11. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by the beauty of things I just cry and my monkeys say "Oh. Mom's crying again."

Eleven Answers to Sleepy Joe's Questions:

1. Who is your favorite literary hero? I don't do favorites, really. Here are some I like: Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes, Anne from Anne of Green Gables, Tom Joad from The Grapes of Wrath, Perkus Tooth from Chronic City, Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter series. These are just a few I can think of right now.

2. Why? I like characters that aren't necessarily the hero. I like flawed characters, I like the ones who aren't front and center, but are next to the front and center. I like characters who are rich and dynamic, with strong character. I like characters who mess up and change over time, who work hard and keep living.

3. What is your favorite children's story? The Three Questions, based on a story by Leo Tolstoy.

4. Are you a closet reader? Are there some books that you won't admit to reading? It's kind of too dark and crowded in my closet. I prefer my bed or the couch. I find the best way to keep from having embarrassing secrets discovered is by telling them myself. I read every last word of the Twilight Series. Same with the Sookie Stackhouse books. I read all of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books. I used to sneak pulp romances in junior high for the sexy bits. I've read every Agatha Christie book ever written. I also read The Devil Wears Prada. I've read the entirety of the graphic novel Buffy ouevre. I am oddly resistant to best-sellers and then I break down and read them eventually to find out what all the hype was about. I'm more embarrassed about admitting that there are some books that I should have read, but haven't.

5. Do you have any regrets in life? I regret having spent so much time reading the Twilight series. I regret that I didn't get that "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner" T-shirt I saw at a restaurant.

6. Name one ambition, not including getting your writing published. My Miss America answer to this question is that I want to make a difference with my life. I really do. I don't know exactly how, but I want my life to have meant something, mattered to people, and to have helped make at least a small part of the world a better place. This has always been my ambition for as long as I can remember. The "how" of it changes, but I like the idea of being open to the possibilities with this in mind so I can do what's needed where ever I am. I also would like to leave my kids with boatloads of money so that they don't have to worry about things, but that's more of a pipe dream.

7. Heels or flats for a night out? Doc Marten's boots. So I guess that would be flats. I have a lovely pair of Italian heels that are collecting dust in my closet that make me feel like a dominatrix, but in a good way. They are oddly comfortable for such high heels, but then I feel like an impostor when I wear them.

8. What are your comfort foods? Chips and queso and re-fried beans. That might explain number 6 in the previous list.

9. Normal clothes or comfy PJs? I like for my "normal clothes" to fit like comfy PJs, so really, it's the best of both worlds. My PJs kind of resemble workout clothes. So if I should, hypothetically speaking, walk my daughter to school in my PJs, people just think I am super diligent and I am going to work out after I drop her off, rather than being a lazy slob who will go home and eat cookies for breakfast with six cups of coffee. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

10. What is your favorite film? Again with the "favorites". My top 5 are probably... Moulin Rouge, Lost In Translation, Casablanca, The Birdcage, and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

11. Coke or Pepsi? Neither. I'm not much of a soda drinker, but if you've been around the Periphery a while, you'll know what I mean when I say HOT YELLA KOOLAID!

Here's the part where I run around with my arms flailing like a chicken and try to catch someone without running into a lamppost. So get ready to run:

The M-Half of the M-n-J Show
Faith In Ambiguity
The (not always) Lazy-W
Word Nerd Speaks
Just A Mum?

Even if I didn't tag you, you are welcome to play along if you are so inclined...

On your marks, get set... 
Here are your 11 questions:

1. If there were 5 birds in your yard, which one would you eat? And why?
2. What's the best thing that happened to you when you were 7 years old?
3. If the mob was going to take one of your fingers to recover a debt, which finger would you give them? Why? (Or would you do that thing where you flip the table and grab the giant meat cleaver from Vito?)
4. If you were to throw a drink in someone's face, what drink would it be and why would you do it?
5. Someone gives you a gorgeous mink coat for a gift, would you wear it? Why or why not?
6. You are trapped in an elevator with the following people: Elton John, Kathy Griffin, Jimmy Carter and John Malkovich. What do you do? Would you take pictures with your cell phone?
7. Who did you want to be when you were 13? Are you that person? Why or why not?
8. If you found a finger in your burrito, would you set it aside and keep eating? Why or why not?
9. If your navel dispensed the condiment of your choice, what would it be? Why?
10. Are you a ferret person?
11. You are given an award for something you are very proud of. You get up to make your acceptance speech and they hand you a box of teeth. Does it throw you off? What do you do? Would you proudly display it on your mantel?

GO! Happy tagging, folks!

Kreativ Kommunist

It has recently come to my attention that I have an award winning blog and also that I am "It". These are both extremely exciting bits of information.

First, the Kreativ Blogger Award. The award was created in 1849 by Karl Marx and awarded to Friedrich Engels for their blog Das Kommunistische Manifest. While Engels was quite honored by this, he felt it was a little bourgeois to award only one person, so he bestowed it to the other six bloggers in their co-operative: Josef Stalin, Anais Nin, Stephen King, Ayn Rand, Leonard Nimoy and Dr. Seuss. Then there was a bit of a slap fight and Engels went on to become the manager of The Bangles. It is with tremendous gratitude and humility I accept this venerable award from my fellow blogger and writer, Tara at Faith In Ambiguity. Does anyone who reads this blog not read Tara's? You should if you are not already. She will take you on flights of fancy, deep into the soil, through the back doors of your own mind and actions, and into a deeply hilarious or emotional experience. Sometimes all in the same post and you will love her for it.

Because every good commune needs some ground rules (otherwise there would be chickens everywhere!) there are some questions to answer (the following 10 questions) and some statements to make (10 facts about myself) and then we share the wealth (pass it on to some other comrades):

1. What is your favorite song? I can tell you what is not my favorite song. Oh! Susanna! So not my favorite song ever. My favorite song today is Wasted by Lucero. Last week it was Fake Empire by The National. A few weeks ago it was Another One Bites the Dust by Queen. I also have been recently addicted to that song everyone pretends they hate by Gotye (just exactly how do you pronounce that?) When I was four my favorite song was Country Roads by John Denver. When I was thirteen I was completely in love with the one-armed drummer from Def Leppard and my favorite song was Photograph. When I was dating my husband my favorite  song was Birdhouse In Your Soul by They Might Be Giants. When I was a freshman in college it was Circle by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. I'm also partial to Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women 12 & 35. Favorites are wily and ephemeral.

2. What is your favorite dessert? Just desserts. Who doesn't love to see someone get what's coming to them?

3. What ticks you off? Oh you know, the usual. Cliches. Knee-jerk reactions. Jerks. Whistling. Whining, especially when it's an adult. Passive-aggression. Corn nuts. Racists. People who call everyone racists. Unacknowledged hypocrisy. Children. Space invaders.

4. When you are upset, what do you do? Cry. Blame it on other people. Brood a bit. Blame everything in the world on myself. Cry some more. Get over myself.

5. Which is/was your favorite pet? My cat, Chicken. He passed away from old age (barfed himself to death) a few years ago and I have yet to replace him. I had him longer than I had my husband. Now my husband is my favorite pet.

6. Which do you prefer to wear, black or white? Who came up with these questions? I prefer black. I also wear a black cape, mask and ten-gallon hat. But only on Tuesdays. The rest of the time I sew fig leaves together and sport about frightening small children.

7. What is your biggest fear? Mediocrity. Also being vomited on by a hobo on a crowded bus.

8. What is your attitude mostly? Volatile. Not really. Here's the deal: I'm prone to depression and being terribly critical of myself and others, so I make a daily (sometimes hourly) choice to focus on what's positive and to ease up on the whole world. It's a lot of hard work and counter to my nature, so sometimes I snap like the waistband on last year's pantyhose.

9. What is perfection? This is a trick question. Am I supposed to say something about sipping a drink on a beach with a book in my hand here? Perfection means completeness. In that sense, my life is perfect. I am satisfied and it is complete. As in whole. Lacking nothing. There's always something shinier or better or newer to want, but to quote my friend Bram Stoker completely out of context, "That way madness lies."

10. What is your guilty pleasure? I have none. I take no pleasure in anything. That's so not true. Guilt ruins pleasure, so I try not to waste the precious pleasure time I have feeling guilty. If it makes you feel guilty, don't do it. If you enjoy it, don't feel bad about it. Within bounds, obviously. I'm talking about cupcakes and chips and queso here, not murder and theft.

Ten Random Facts About Myself:

1. I have gorgeous toes. No long, gnarly one that looks like a misplaced Cheeto.

2. I don't like for other people's hair to touch me unless I am very close to them personally and emotionally.

3. I totally made up that whole history of the Kreativ Blogger Award.

4. I only have one tattoo, but I have four or five more that are waiting to be done as soon as my tattoo artist friend scrapes together enough cash to fly out here and do them for me. I will pay him in home cooked meals and poetry.

5. I cried yesterday while watching a viral Youtube video.

6. I'm not sure a gut reaction is always the best reaction. Sometimes it is my gut reaction to kiss a stranger on the mouth when they say something especially nice. On the other hand, I rely heavily at times on my intuition. How can I tell when I should and when I shouldn't? With my gut, of course.

7. I don't take blogging very seriously. This is not a judgement on people who do. I don't take physics very seriously, either, but I appreciate the work that physicists do.

8. I went through a whole phase at work when I was an event planner where I signed all of my faxes "Love, Lou". Nobody ever mentioned it.

9. If I have a bad headache, I lie in bed an panic silently that it might be a brain tumor. I mentally put all my affairs in order and try to imagine what my husband's and kids' lives would be like without me. I also stress because I have no one to delete my blog and Facebook accounts.

10. One time I was in a diner in Tampa, Florida and Jerry Garcia was sitting there writing. I was freaking out about it but decided not to talk to him. When I got up to go to the bathroom, I walked past his table and he said "Don't I know you from somewhere? Gainesville?" and I said "Um, no," and went on to the bathroom. When I got back to my table, the old lady who was refilling my coffee cup said "Honey, don't talk to that man. He's a screwball."

Now for the goods. The sharing of the wealth in this great work collective of Blogland. Here are some blogs I stalk regularly and they might not even know I do. I'm OK with that.

GweenBrick - The author of this blog is talented and he works in Special Ed, which is sexy. The blog itself is by turns self-effacing, touching, hilarious beyond the normal bounds, and true. It is always brilliant.

corner blog - Tiffanie is a part-time burlesque dancer, which is pretty sexy. She's a full time mom, a designer, an artist, an architect and just generally amazing. Reading her blog is kind of like flipping through your favorite art magazine.

Scaryduck: Not Scary. Not a Duck. - Is completely insane and funny. Also British, which is sexy.

Vesuvius At Home - She writes, she keeps bees. Sexy. All the way around. Her prose leaves me speechless and nodding and laughing and crying sometimes.

The Trans-Gentle Wife - The strength and candor in this blog are staggering. Lucy writes with such clarity and passion about a life that is so very different than mine, but somehow manages to find a common thread for all of us.

Chuck Prophet's Blog - He is one of my all-time favorite musicians. I have driven three hours, pregnant, in the rain to hear him play. His blog is almost surreal. He's both a talented writer and musician and he adores his wife. Sexy.

Good Youngman Brown - This is a relatively new blog to me, but he writes well and is witty and sarcastic. That's sexy enough for me. He dabbles in fiction, too.

We're going to have to play tag tomorrow. This is super long and I have some knitting to do. Thank you, dear readers for hanging out around the Periphery. Thank you, Tara. For everything.

Sweet, Sweet Love

There are not enough ways to say thank you in pixels and fonts on a screen. In person I do things like send cards, bake cakes or muffins, knit or crochet small items and give big teary hugs to say thank you. There are not enough ways to say it, but I will say it again: Thank you. All of you. I cannot even begin to explain the metamorphosis that is taking place with me, nurtured in large part by this whole merry band of folks who read my ramblings and listen. Really listen, and reflect and discuss and share. It is the hem of a brocade dream that I've grasped with my little sweaty typing hands that is still unfolding before me. Thank you.

I can probably count on one hand the number of times I can remember being called "sweet" in my life. It's not an adjective often springs to mind in relation to me. It is one that instantly makes me think of Word Nerd, though. She's one of the most generous bloggers I've seen. She spends so much of her precious blogging time encouraging others that I am in awe of how she does it and still manages to write her wonderful blog. She has been kind enough to include me in her list of "Irresistibly Sweet Bloggers". I am touched, and I am grateful.

In order to accept this award, I must first divulge seven bits of information about myself. Then I will pass it on to some other deserving bloggers that I like. I honestly thought I would never be awarded one of these lovely awards again after this post, wherein I told 7 outright lies about myself. I promise I won't do that this time. So, um, 7 things:

1. I was never allowed to act like a spoiled child when I was a child, I had to wait until I was an adult to indulge in that. I still just save it for special occasions.
2. If I had not just eaten a very large cheeseburger with blue cheese, I would probably bury my face in the cake pictured above.
3. I once worked in restaurant where hollering "Yee-haw!" at specified times was required of the service staff. I vacillated between running and hiding somewhere when it was time to shout and bellowing it at the top of my (considerably resonant) lungs no matter where I was. That startles people in the restroom.
4. I don't like spanikopita.
5. One time I drove into the hole in the floor at JiffyLube. I have no idea how the car got out of the hole because the attendant stuck her face in my window and said "Just. Get. Out." through clenched teeth, so I went into the waiting room and drank bad coffee and tried to look like nothing happened until they were done.
6. I once threw my sister's shoes out of the window of a moving car because they smelled so bad. I still feel bad about littering like that. It was the early 90s, though, so I don't think people cared that much back then.
7. I am uselessly ambidextrous. I am predominately right handed, but I can write backwards with my left hand. If I ever find myself in a situation where I will have to send mirror messages, I will be all set.

Now for the good part. First off, check  here and here and here for some other bloggers that I love. If you don't see your name on the list, it's not that I don't love you, it's that I ran out of room and also we all kind of read each other or have received these types of awards before and I wanted to inject some fresh blood into the mix. But of course, I adore you all. So if you're reading this, give yourself a Hallmarkchocolatecakecrochetedmittensgianttearyhug from me. Also, check these folks out:


Vesuvius At Home
Faith In Ambiguity
The (not always) Lazy W
My Worlds My Words My Worries
Alphabet Salad
Mark's Work
In Search of a Title
When Cows Cry
The Mommy Rant
Corner Blog
Closed Captioned For The Thinking Impaired
Much Needed Advice

It's a cornucopia of styles, methods, messages there. Enjoy and share the sweet, sweet love.

The Gift of Truth

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty', - that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Thank ye, John Keats. A beautiful sentiment and often repeated completely out of context. (Don't even get me started.) And, it's all well and good for a piece of ancient pottery, but really? Is that really all ye need to know? I don't know. Maybe it is. I'm mulling around this maligned poetic fragment today for a few different reasons. (Not the least of which is because I have to keep the gray matter sharp. Ouch. A sharp brain seems like it would be a painful thing, indeed. Maybe I just need to keep it firm, yet gelatinous enough to keep some of those mysterious folds and electric information highways open and firing in the correct directions. Radioactive jello, if you will. And speaking of electric information highways, who on earth embeds some sort of spammy iPad giveaway in a scholarly website of poetic deconstruction?! Digression complete.)

So, truth. It's been a hot topic the last couple of weeks (or millennia) owing to a writing prompt and a couple of friendly blogger awards. I'm not quite cool enough to know exactly what GBE2 even means, much less participate. But I have been cool enough to have received a few of these awards. Namely, The Versatile Blogger Award and the Tell Me More About Yourself Award. I want to say, as I have said before, that I am really and truly honored that each and every person who reads this blog even reads my nonsense. Your enjoyment is the ganache on the torte. And the Belgian chocolate curls are the little bits of love that get sent my way.

 The gist of the awards is to share 7 (not 6, not 12) things about yourself. That's where the truth comes in and it all gets slippery. Perhaps I'm over thinking the whole thing. (Moi? Never.) It's a little bit hard for me to disclose (I typed "disclothesed" by mistake and that's funny. Freudian finger slips.) these "truths" about myself because I think in the very act of it we edit it around to the things we think will be the funniest or the most interesting or make us seem award-winning enough. That's not to say we're all a bunch of dishonest liar-liars. It's just one of those human nature kind of things. We, all of us, have our pants on fire a little bit. It's the nature of personal perspective. I also think that the truths that we discover about people, we discover indirectly. Out of the corners of our eyes, if you will. They are the things that shine through the stories we tell, our reactions to situations, our interactions with our worlds. Sometimes the things we most fervently believe to be true about ourselves are more a product of defense mechanisms or our expectations of ourselves. Over thinking? Yes. But if you've hung around the Periphery any time at all, you know that's what we're all about here.

I believe there are absolute truths to be known. By definition, truth must be one thing and not another. I'm just not entirely sure that I can tell the truth about myself. I can, however, make up some fantastic lies. Being versatile, and all.

1. I have a goiter the size of a pomelo under my chin. Rather than have it fixed, I'd rather paint a face on it every day to reflect my mood.

2. The entities that I refer to as "the Hooligan" and "my jBird" are actually my extensive golf ball collection and a Grecian urn of my dead cat's ashes, respectively.

3. I make and wear pillbox hats out of old tuna cans. Sometimes I rinse them out first.

4. I only eat foods that begin with the letter M.

5. I am actually a retired rugby player (New Zealand All Blacks) who is writing this blog as a therapy exercise in "getting in touch with my feminine side".

6. When I was 6, I fell into an open manhole cover and was raised for 4 years by CHUDs until I was spotted on a reconnaissance mission to the grocery store for Mallomars. That's when the goats took over my upbringing.

7. I was once in a car full of underaged, drunk, naked people who got pulled over for failing to signal a turn. We were let go with only a warning. It helps to have those CHUD connections.

Now, anyone who has made it to the end of this nonsense intact gets an award.

Also, in all sincerity, go check out The M Half of the M-n-J Show. She's smart, she's got a rapier wit, she does weekly grammar lessons, she writes fiction, she obviously has eclectic taste in blogs because she gave me this award along with some other blogs that are good, and she lives in one of the coolest cities in the country. She's one of those people who is great to have around to keep you on your toes and keep you laughing. Who doesn't want someone like that around?  She also has a thing for parrots and pirates.

The Gift of Lilacs

Her writing style is chatty and sweet. She writes with such earnestness and sincerity, you know she is exactly the sort of person who you would want by your side in a crisis. You just know she would listen, she would console and she would uplift without ever seeming preachy or smug. She is the genuine article.
Her story is fascinating. She's done so much, been so many places, but she's got this quiet humility about her. A simplicity of speech and authenticity that you can't help but love.

She is a woman of faith. She and her family have been putting that faith in action since she was born. This is a comforting thing in a world of half-truths and instant gratification. To know that there are people who live by their principles, no matter what, no matter where. Who have the patience to see which bend their journey takes next, and to do it with grace and good humor.

She reads my blog, so she must have a sense of humor. Or a lot of grace. I'm not sure which. She bestowed my blog with the Versatile Blogger Award, which is an honor. But the larger honor is that this woman would read at all. I am graced by her quiet presence. In fact, I didn't know until yesterday that she even knew I existed, even though I stop by and watch the pretty snowflakes fall on her blog.

Her screen name is Social Lilac, which even though I don't know her personally, seems perfect. Delicate, yet surprisingly strong flowers that can fill a whole house with the fragrance of their sweet presence. Instead of following directions (and including 7 tips for dealing with me and listing my favorite bloggers in no particular order) I will, instead, pay it all back to her. Because I feel a strong connection to her and to her story and I respect her for seeming to be a lot of things I am not.

So when you get a chance, go check out Papa is a Preacher for a dose of good sense, good grace, humor and light. And snowflakes.

**Update: I just discovered this morning via a comment on CdnKaro's blog that Larissa the Lilac is 17 years old. Seventeen! Now I am at least seventeen more times impressed with her.**

The Gift of a Great Big Bleeding Heart

Word Nerd saves the day! I had been trying to bludgeon a post into submission for the better part of the afternoon when I decided to take five. Bloodied, winded and growling, I thought it best to put down the baseball bat and instead check and see what nice things people had to say today. Lo and behold, what should I find but an award and the whisper of a promise about cookies from the lovely Word Nerd. She speaks, you know. She speaks so touchingly, so eloquently, so hilariously about things (quite literally) from A to Z that I am quite honored to have been included in her list of people of whom she has requested 7 things. I feel like I've been asked to sit at the popular table. And quite a table it is. Go check out her list. Fabulousness abounds.

So, it's the Tell Me More About Yourself Award, wherein I will divulge 7 things about myself and then choose 15 other people to tag. (Can I just say that if this were taking place in, say..., a bar? Would not be the same sort of honor. Nevertheless, I digress.) So lucky for you, my merry band of faithful readers, the very post I had been kicking around with steel toed boots earlier was rather a twaddly self-reflective one and it was almost as if I was preparing for this very moment.

1. I anthropomorphize things often and with reckless abandon. Not just in my writing, but in my everyday life. It helps me get things done if I think of it as hanging out with a friend or vanquishing a foe. Just yesterday, in fact, my jBird, ever literal, asked me: "Why do you keep referring to the marshmallows as 'he' and 'she'?" Why? So that we will be gentle with them, of course.

2. I have always wanted to be interviewed by Charlie Rose. Not for anything in particular, just kind of to sit and shoot the breeze with him. Kind of like a Charlie Rose Tell Me More About Yourself Award. I don't just want him to interview me. I want him to think that I am intelligent and witty. I also want to say something in the course of the interview that would cause him to either do a spit-take with his water or let loose a great big snorty belly laugh. Preferably both.

3. I'm not terribly vain (or maybe I'm so horrifically vain that I feign not to care) but I am still a girl. So when, a few months ago, the young man at the deli counter in the grocery store elbowed his co-worker and said "You ever watch Weeds?" and then nodded in my direction, I did not leap over the counter and kiss him on the mouth like I wanted to. Instead, I left my shopping basket in the middle of the store, ran out to the car and called my husband and screamed: "THE BOY IN THE DELI THINKS I LOOK LIKE MARY-LOUISE PARKER!"  He totally got it. Which leads me to number...

4. My husband was the 9th person to ask me to marry him. He was not my 9th choice. He is my first and only and ever choice. I'm not entirely sure what the other 8 had in mind, but it wasn't me. I had pretty much decided that as far as dating went, it was either settle or abstain. That it was pretty much hopeless to ever think I could connect with anyone in any sort of meaningful and lasting way. Most of my dating consisted of my hiding large swaths of myself for one reason or another and the result being that the boyfriends would fall in love with some other person that they thought was me. Then I would have to break the news to them that no, they had never had full access and I thought they knew that and oh! the crying and the vomiting and the moving out of state and not dating of women any more and the joining of the military. The other half of my dating consisted of men who thought that they knew me pretty well and as one of them said "wanted to tame me." Uh, scary. No. Very scary. So this, my friends, is why my husband is the most amazing man on earth. He caught me off guard and I splashed crazy all over him and not only did he lap it up, he celebrated it, adored it and cherished it and wanted to live with it just as it was for the rest of his life. We've been married 13 and a half years and my mom says we still act like newlyweds. We actually just act like us.

5. You may be wishing Word Nerd didn't include me on her list at this point. I am an avid coffee drinker. I can drink just about anyone under the table when it comes to a steaming hot cup of joe. I take mine straight up, neat. The stronger, the blacker, the better. If you were stuck in the Donner Party with me and were forced to eat my meat, it would taste like Arabica. (It would also probably be a little stringy and need to be marinated first, but I digress.) But on wintry evenings such as tonight, I like to have a cup of tea. I am drinking in Stash Meyer Lemon Herbal and I think I may have inadvertently made it with hot dog water. I'm going to drink the whole cup just to be sure, though.

6. I'm not that great with children. My own are just used to my methods. I try to treat mine as much like little people as I can. So no, not everything they do is fabulous. Sometimes they have bad days. Sometimes they bug the ever-loving crap out of me and I need to walk away. But just like with any strong healthy relationship, there's room for give and take. I'm completely honest with my kids about things including admitting when I am way off base, explaining that sometimes I get scared and confused too, telling them I love them and I am proud of them as often as possible, and giving them a clear idea of what my goals with them are, what their boundaries are and why. I think they deserve that and so far they rise to expectations and far exceed them. I get some flak for my parenting style, but I say the proof is in the pudding.

7. Confession time: I am part of the 1%. No, not that 1%. Would I be sitting here blogging and drinking hot dog lemon tea if I were in that 1%?! No, I am in the 1% of people who, according to the Myers-Briggs personality inventory are categorized as INFJ. I have taken this personality inventory countless times in countless situations and I always end up with the same results. If you really want the skinny on me, click the link and it's a pretty apt description that I didn't write. I am uncomfortable with direct self-disclosure for a lot of reasons. It's a lot more interesting to discover things in the course of discourse over time. Keep reading, friends, and you will know more about me. Because try as I might, I really can't hide my great big bleeding heart.

Word Nerd hogged several of the people that would have topped my list: Masked Mom, Just Jane, The M Half, Kelly... so check them out, too. But maybe not Kelly because she cheated and took my idea of an open award to anyone who cares to read this here blog. Here are some people whose brains I would love to pick for innumerable distinct reasons:
Darren
Green Goose
Sonya
Jewels
Lindsey
Scary Duck
cdnkaro
Nadia
Krista
and I would add Nicole, but she just did the most delightful 100 things about herself the other day. Read that.

And many more, but my 7-year-old laptop is about to create a black hole and disrupt the time-space continuum from the cutting and pasting of links and the Chief Lou is so very patiently waiting for me to watch Season 2 of Torchwood. In all sincerity, I would like to thank each and every person who clicks this way from the bottom of my great big bleeding heart.