25 (Maybe Kinda Interesting if I'm Very Very Lucky) Random Things About Me
After having been tagged like three hundred gazillion frickin' times for this meme, I guess it's time to do it for myself. My life, it is an open book to you. Of course, it may not be a particularly well written one and you may find yourself asking why the publisher thought it was worth the paper, but surely it can at least surpass the literary merit of, say, James Fenimore Cooper or Barbara Cartland.
1. When I was a little girl, I often pretended I was a woman named Diana who had many, many children. Like, 20. The favorite children were played by dolls. The others were apparently neither seen nor heard, but they did have names. Probably.
2. Diana was always patient and kind and saintlike as a mother. This was most definitely a product of my overactive imagination.
3. As a freshman in high school I decided that were I ever to have twin daughters, they would be named Lorenne Renee and Marisa Anne.
4. For most of my young life I had no intention of ever having children. Of course, this was in direct conflict with #1 and #3, which casts doubt on my sanity.
5. This all changed when I fell in love with a tiny girl named T. DeG. the summer after my 10th grade year, during a four hour period in which I walked her in endless circles singing lullabies in the barren waiting room of a Senegalese airport in the wee hours of the morning. Why this experience would be so life changing in a POSITIVE way may also cast doubt on my sanity.
6. I currently am on Zoloft for depression and have been diagnosed as having had post partum depression for three years. That's on top of almost lifelong depression, mind you. So those aforementioned doubts may be somewhat valid.
7. I'm doing much better, thank you.
8. Part of my new outlook on life includes a renewed connection with and love for a favorite poem by Emily Dickinson:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
9. I'm thinking seriously of getting a tattoo on my ankle that in some way depicts an aspect of this poem.
10. I am very scared of needles.
11. I'm also terrified of heights. Even more so than needles.
12. I love rollercoasters.
13. The last time I went to Cedar Point, the Power Tower was one of the newest attractions. Somehow I ended up on that instrument of torture not one, but THREE times, dragged on by friends who apparently thought that my heart-stopping fear of free fall should be tested. Twice we went on the one where they drag you slowly up to the very top where you dangle in abject horror and wait for an interminable, randomly selected time for them to decide to drop you hundreds of feet, only to bounce back up and then back down and then back up and then back down while your stomach tries to usurp your head and your bladder would let loose if every muscle in your body wasn't completely caught up in the rigor of screaming your throat raw and bloody.
14. I am capable of screams that make grown men blanch and think twice about doing whatever it is that's making that crazy woman create such a noise.
15. I am addicted to cute shoes. Fortunately, I am very good at finding inexpensive shoes that won't bankrupt me. Payless and DSW are good friends to me, in that enabling sort of way.
16. At Fall Parent Teacher Conferences I had a number of parents check to see what I had on my feet because their children had come home with tales about Ms. TeacherMommy's wonderful and extensive shoe collection. They were delighted to see I was wearing my adorable 1940s-style black and white check high heels with the open toe and ankle strap.
17. I insist on being called Ms. TeacherMommy at work. I have always been Ms., never "Miss" or "Mrs.," in the workplace. After all, men don't change their honorifics based on their marital status, do they?
18. I am a feminist, but not in a femiNazi sort of way. I believe in gender equality, not gender homogeneity.
19. I like pink.
20. I'm wearing pink slipper socks.
21. My hands and feet get cold easily. I have the same circulation problems that my mother has in this regard.
22. I might have to get my wedding ring resized because I've lost a little weight even in my fingers. But I need to wait for warmer weather to see what heat will do.
23. My ring has a gorgeous emerald that was found on a sunken Spanish galleon off the coast of Florida. My husband bought it and had it set in a ring for me, because emeralds are my favorite gem.
24. I like emeralds not only for their color, but also BECAUSE they always have flaws. Any emerald that is flawless is lab-produced, not natural. I once read a story that called the flaws at the center of an emerald the Emerald's Garden. I love the idea of a jewel that is considered beautiful and valuable and rare, not because it is flawless, but because it has delicate filaments running throughout its core.
25. I am learning that I'm also beautiful and valuable and rare, not because I am flawless, but because I am me.
2 bits of love:
May I suggest that you do not get your tattoo in a tall, glass building?
#18: Well said. I believe I will be using this one. Thank you!
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