Seven Things

I’ve been tagged by Marjorie with the cool blog 280 Main Street, and felt all honored she reads my blog because hers is interesting and well-written and her blogroll has been so fun to explore, and there are times when you start seeing this all as an interesting conversation that is spinning off in all of the potential directions that conversations could spin off in at the same time if they weren’t so generally linear, and at this pace that allows for thoughtful response and yet is constantly moving, and I feel like I’ve been sitting on the periphery, but it is such a relief to realize how many interesting and thoughtful and funny and literate people are out there after feeling just slightly out of place at PTA meetings and going to preschool mothers’ groups where no one reads for fun, and would never, ever write for fun. But it’s funny: the rules include tagging seven other people at the end, and I get all squeamish about that, thinking that I am the only person who would be delighted to be tagged, worrying the people I want to tag are too busy, wouldn’t appreciate it, whatever. Can that count as one of my weird things? That I think I am the only person feeling shy or uncomfortable or awkward and am always surprised (and grateful!) to realize it isn’t so?

Anyway, I’ve been slow blogging this month — now that we’re almost halfway through November maybe I can say this is the year I thought I could manage to write 50,000 words by November 30th, NaNoWriMo style, without jinxing myself. My current count is 23,883, and it’s awful, but I can handle know I don’t ever have to write the whole thing, I only just have to get through the next 1,667 words. Anyway, that’s why I’m being worse than usual at answering emails, calling, being responsible for anything more than a bare minimum of laundry and easy meal preparation. So, I am grateful to have a good reason to post. And I will try and come up with seven facts about myself that aren’t on my list of 50 factoids and aren’t that I think I am the only person as insecure as I am, nor that I was surprised to learn I talk with my hands.

RULES:
•Link to your tagger and post rules.
•Share 7 facts about yourself, some random and some weird.
•Tag 7 people at the end of post and list their names.
•Let them know they were tagged by a comment on their blog.

1. Right before we met, my husband consulted a fortune teller in Santa Fe — like one out of two times in his whole life he did this — who told him he was about to meet the woman he was going to marry.
2. I kept my name when we got married, which isn’t that unusual, but we decided the kids should just have my last name because I’d more often be the one dealing with schools, doctors, etc. This confuses some people.
3. I have a life-long self-image as a non-jock, but my well-being seems to depend on daily time on the elliptical we own. I am all ritualistic about listening to my favorite podcasts in a particular order in alternation with some upbeat songs while exercising.
4. I also am 95% consistent about writing three pages a morning longhand in a journal, and have been doing this almost five years, since my third son was a tiny baby and I was having a rough time coping. So I have a big stack of journals I don’t want anyone to ever read.
5. I tripped during intermission during a youth symphony tour to Great Britain my junior year of high school and didn’t smash my violin but jammed the little finger on left hand and had to go to a doctor in Bath, England. My experience of the NHS wasn’t really Michael Moore-worthy, with the doctor more or less telling me off as a whiner for wasting resources when there were people far worse off than I, but that finger still isn’t as strong as my others.
6. I got fired from a job managing a video store in college and I honestly cannot remember the reason now, but was devastated, and yet not working for those people turned out to be much, much better for me.
7. Both the video store I worked at and the bakery I worked at afterwards burnt to the ground. It wasn’t me…

Ok, tagging: how about I contact the people I would want to tag and ask them if they mind being tagged, that’s not against the rules, is it? And I can get back to you on this?