On this, the last day of NaBloPoMo, I shall respond to Boegle's tag on this meme (her seven weird things are here). This way I don't (I think) have to tag anyone else. The rules are to link back to the person who tagged you (she tagged me in the Comments section on Monday), tag seven random people, and write about seven weird things about yourself.
Because I couldn't respond right away I've had a bit to think about this. I think "unusual" is a better word than "weird", certainly less loaded. Here goes:
1) I'm bisexual. That's definitely in the unusual-rather-than-weird category. I don't think being bisexual is weird, it's just the way things are. But I recognize that other people seem to think it's a little weird (and I'm not talking about wide-stance Republicans here), and it's a good, sensationalized way to start the list. The rest of the list is in no particular order.
2) Until recently, I could recite (not sing) all of the words on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in order. This is my Desert Island Disc, the record with which I learned how to use a record player, and my instant cheer-up solution.
3) I have never eaten a peanut butter sandwich, but that's because I'm allergic. I have, however, made one. I had a camper who didn't bring a lunch when I was working at the JCC day camp in 1986. I actually made four tiny PB&Js because the only bread we had was Melba toast. I remember it as a singularly unpleasant experience because of the scent, which I find overpowering.
4) I never thought I would marry, up until a couple of months before I asked Zirpu to marry me. In a life marked by so much risk-avoidance and indecision masquerading as decision, marrying him was so right it was compelling and I had to ask. I didn't even shack up with him before asking, and we got married when I'd known him less than two years.
5) I was on TV when I was nine or so (I still had the braid, so I was no more than ten). It was a show on cable TV called "Rainy Days," an educational show for kids a little older than the audience for The Electric Company. I talked to the host (maybe it was a talk show targeting what are now known as "tweens") about my then-current favorite book, The Phantom Tollbooth, which I have given to several children in the last 10 years.
This happened before VCRs came along so I never saw my interview. I don't know if I caused a Fonzie effect.
6) I'm a ballroom dancer. If you're wondering, my favorite dances are rumba and foxtrot. My least favorite are tango (American and Argentine) and waltz, though I would watch the latter anytime.
7) I hate white underwear. I have been known to rant about how difficult it is to buy packs of undies that don't include white ones. I have particular hatred for Tighty (or Tidy?) Whities, and have stopped dating a couple men once I learned of their preference for them.
and. . .Because none of the above are particularly strange, except maybe the "reciting a rock album" thing:
8) I can put my toes in my mouth even though I have never done yoga. I still do it sometimes.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Two Parties in Three Days
(on top of four in four days last weekend)
We had a volunteer appreciation party at the food bank this afternoon, after service this morning. It was a really nice event, with lots of food donated by local restaurants and live bluegrass music. About fifty people came, but it could have been 100 (and heaven knows where all those people would have stood, because as large as the new building is, it's not that large). We had ordered mugs for everyone as a thank you gift, too.
I get lots of hugs at the food bank, too. So I feel appreciated as well.
I have been so focused on work that I didn't realize until Monday that I had been planning to use Thursday afternoon, when I don't usually work, to hit the party store and get stuff together for the Mother/Baby Shower I'm co-hosting on Saturday for Shanaleh. Then on Monday I realized that I was going to be at the food bank all day and I didn't know anything about what to do about the shower.
Fortunately I was volunteered to get the stuff we needed for today's event at the party store, so while the balloons were being blown up I walked around and thought about the M/B shower. Very quickly I realized I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I'm surprised that so much baby shower stuff is gendered; I thought that showers generally happen before babies arrive, and it still seems to me that a lot of people don't know what sex the baby will be. I could not remember which games Shaneleh had said she thought sounded fun (I have since looked; whew, neither involve a lot of "stuff" to do).
Ultimately I got some little treat bags, and stickers to make them pretty, but I'm not sure what I'm going to put in them (I am considering some kind of candied and/or spiced nuts). I talked to Shaneleh tonight and realized that I could give chocolates as prizes. I know I need to go to Whole Foods for the nuts and probably Smart and Final for candy (as in "Guess how many Skittles are in this [typical baby-related item {omg, what will that be?! Or I'll just use a bottle}) and over to See's for the prizes. None of that sounds bad, but I'll have to do all of it between 7 tomorrow night and 10 Saturday morning. Plus I have to put the treat bags together! Augh!
If I had known six weeks ago what the last two weeks were going to be like, I would have insisted we have this party the second or third week of December. Experience tells me that everything will be fine on Saturday and Shaneleh is a pretty low maintenance person anyway. Still, thank goodness that the other host has her act together. . .
We had a volunteer appreciation party at the food bank this afternoon, after service this morning. It was a really nice event, with lots of food donated by local restaurants and live bluegrass music. About fifty people came, but it could have been 100 (and heaven knows where all those people would have stood, because as large as the new building is, it's not that large). We had ordered mugs for everyone as a thank you gift, too.
I get lots of hugs at the food bank, too. So I feel appreciated as well.
I have been so focused on work that I didn't realize until Monday that I had been planning to use Thursday afternoon, when I don't usually work, to hit the party store and get stuff together for the Mother/Baby Shower I'm co-hosting on Saturday for Shanaleh. Then on Monday I realized that I was going to be at the food bank all day and I didn't know anything about what to do about the shower.
Fortunately I was volunteered to get the stuff we needed for today's event at the party store, so while the balloons were being blown up I walked around and thought about the M/B shower. Very quickly I realized I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I'm surprised that so much baby shower stuff is gendered; I thought that showers generally happen before babies arrive, and it still seems to me that a lot of people don't know what sex the baby will be. I could not remember which games Shaneleh had said she thought sounded fun (I have since looked; whew, neither involve a lot of "stuff" to do).
Ultimately I got some little treat bags, and stickers to make them pretty, but I'm not sure what I'm going to put in them (I am considering some kind of candied and/or spiced nuts). I talked to Shaneleh tonight and realized that I could give chocolates as prizes. I know I need to go to Whole Foods for the nuts and probably Smart and Final for candy (as in "Guess how many Skittles are in this [typical baby-related item {omg, what will that be?! Or I'll just use a bottle}) and over to See's for the prizes. None of that sounds bad, but I'll have to do all of it between 7 tomorrow night and 10 Saturday morning. Plus I have to put the treat bags together! Augh!
If I had known six weeks ago what the last two weeks were going to be like, I would have insisted we have this party the second or third week of December. Experience tells me that everything will be fine on Saturday and Shaneleh is a pretty low maintenance person anyway. Still, thank goodness that the other host has her act together. . .
This photo goes with yesterday's post
It's from one of my yearbooks, and I didn't want to take the time to find and scan it last night. Photos of us are all over that year's yearbook, but this is my favorite one.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Someone On My Mind
I haven't been able to get to the library so I am rereading Annie On My Mind (spoiler alert: link includes a plot synopsis). It's a story about two 12th graders who fall in love. I read it for the first time about ten years ago.
This book was published in 1982, the year I graduated from eighth grade and started high school. I wish I had read it instead of Judy Blume, which I didn't understand. Almost everything that happened in 11th grade, and a lot of the things I'd felt and experienced prior to that, would have made much more sense had I known that girls could, would, and did like girls. I only knew that boys and men were or could be homosexual. For me, so many things were classified under "If I were a boy. . ." The one book I read that had a plot about gay lovers (from the library at my Catholic school, oddly enough) was about a girl who finds her boyfriend in the bushes having sex with her best friend - also a guy.
I was such a dummy. I only have the Reagan Administration and the total lack of talk about sex at home as my defense. The big mystery is why none of it hit home when my (very progressive) PE teacher brought in a panel to discuss homosexuality and even bisexuality for one class during the "Life Skills" quarter.
Of course I fell in love with a girl in my class, my best friend, and in retrospect I know she fell in love with me too. She had a paper route so she could never sleep over, but when I spent the night at her place, I got up and delivered papers with her. When we got back she made the craziest French toast ("When we make it in New Zealand, we always add hot sauce") and I would eat it and not only declare it, but actually find it delicious. For years afterwards, and I mean years, because the last time it happened has been since I moved back to California, whenever I saw someone who looked like her, my heart would stop and I would have to catch my breath (if that sounds like hyperbole, remember this was my first love and I was a teenager so I've gone back to that place when it happened).
If I'd read Annie On My Mind in, say, 1983, or even 1986, so many things would have made much more sense. The fact that I never got what was so special about boys, just for starters! And maybe this girl and I would have had an actual relationship. . . Not that it wouldn't have been full of passion, drama, and confusion- an adolescent relationship is an adolescent relationship after all - and its own problems, especially as in 1985, we would not have been able to be out comfortably at our high school.
I was feeling sad last night about this girl for the first time in many years. And it wasn't she that I was feeling sad about really, it was the missed opportunity, or the experience I could have had or should have had, instead of the one I actually did, which resulted in my running around the halls at the school thinking, "I'm too young for this! I'm only 17!" and getting in a stupid, crazy fight on prom night (well, maybe I wouldn't have gotten in that fight, but I'm sure I would have pled youth about anything). I wonder if we could talk about that craziness now; we sure couldn't the last time we saw each other, in 1989. But all of that is a long story, at least another blog post if not a novel.
This book was published in 1982, the year I graduated from eighth grade and started high school. I wish I had read it instead of Judy Blume, which I didn't understand. Almost everything that happened in 11th grade, and a lot of the things I'd felt and experienced prior to that, would have made much more sense had I known that girls could, would, and did like girls. I only knew that boys and men were or could be homosexual. For me, so many things were classified under "If I were a boy. . ." The one book I read that had a plot about gay lovers (from the library at my Catholic school, oddly enough) was about a girl who finds her boyfriend in the bushes having sex with her best friend - also a guy.
I was such a dummy. I only have the Reagan Administration and the total lack of talk about sex at home as my defense. The big mystery is why none of it hit home when my (very progressive) PE teacher brought in a panel to discuss homosexuality and even bisexuality for one class during the "Life Skills" quarter.
Of course I fell in love with a girl in my class, my best friend, and in retrospect I know she fell in love with me too. She had a paper route so she could never sleep over, but when I spent the night at her place, I got up and delivered papers with her. When we got back she made the craziest French toast ("When we make it in New Zealand, we always add hot sauce") and I would eat it and not only declare it, but actually find it delicious. For years afterwards, and I mean years, because the last time it happened has been since I moved back to California, whenever I saw someone who looked like her, my heart would stop and I would have to catch my breath (if that sounds like hyperbole, remember this was my first love and I was a teenager so I've gone back to that place when it happened).
If I'd read Annie On My Mind in, say, 1983, or even 1986, so many things would have made much more sense. The fact that I never got what was so special about boys, just for starters! And maybe this girl and I would have had an actual relationship. . . Not that it wouldn't have been full of passion, drama, and confusion- an adolescent relationship is an adolescent relationship after all - and its own problems, especially as in 1985, we would not have been able to be out comfortably at our high school.
I was feeling sad last night about this girl for the first time in many years. And it wasn't she that I was feeling sad about really, it was the missed opportunity, or the experience I could have had or should have had, instead of the one I actually did, which resulted in my running around the halls at the school thinking, "I'm too young for this! I'm only 17!" and getting in a stupid, crazy fight on prom night (well, maybe I wouldn't have gotten in that fight, but I'm sure I would have pled youth about anything). I wonder if we could talk about that craziness now; we sure couldn't the last time we saw each other, in 1989. But all of that is a long story, at least another blog post if not a novel.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
NaBloPoMo Reflection
National Blog Posting Month is almost over, and I've been posting daily along with a whole bunch of other people. I don't know if anyone else has been posting daily all year, but I know I'm not done yet: I have 34 days left. Should I add "at least"? I'm not sure if I'll stop on December 31.
A couple weeks ago I started to feel like I was just hitting my stride on the daily-writing thing. It was encouraging that other people are doing it too, and it even seemed like people who hadn't been posting daily were posting a lot more often. I was surfing the above-mentioned list so I was reading a lot more of people's thoughts, because there is a lot more to read.
I've run across more than one blog in which the blogger complains in several posts in a row about participating. It's only a game; if someone hates it, why would he or she play? I ran across another blog a couple weeks ago in which the post dated 11/1 was the writer explaining his or her excitement about actually starting a blog after thinking about it for a long time. She or he was going to use NaBloPoMo as the mechanism to start and keep the blog.
That was the only post in that blog.
Am I sanguine about this whole month of posting? Probably. I will say that, as this month has gone on, the writing has been up-and-down, including my editing skills (as anyone who reads with a mental red pen has probably noticed). Blame that on the holiday onslaught at the food bank (which has not ended) which has me only wanting to faceplant when I get home.
I'm determined to get through this month without posting only a photo for a day's entry. Since there's only a few days left, I'm sure I'll do that.
A couple weeks ago I started to feel like I was just hitting my stride on the daily-writing thing. It was encouraging that other people are doing it too, and it even seemed like people who hadn't been posting daily were posting a lot more often. I was surfing the above-mentioned list so I was reading a lot more of people's thoughts, because there is a lot more to read.
I've run across more than one blog in which the blogger complains in several posts in a row about participating. It's only a game; if someone hates it, why would he or she play? I ran across another blog a couple weeks ago in which the post dated 11/1 was the writer explaining his or her excitement about actually starting a blog after thinking about it for a long time. She or he was going to use NaBloPoMo as the mechanism to start and keep the blog.
That was the only post in that blog.
Am I sanguine about this whole month of posting? Probably. I will say that, as this month has gone on, the writing has been up-and-down, including my editing skills (as anyone who reads with a mental red pen has probably noticed). Blame that on the holiday onslaught at the food bank (which has not ended) which has me only wanting to faceplant when I get home.
I'm determined to get through this month without posting only a photo for a day's entry. Since there's only a few days left, I'm sure I'll do that.
Monday, November 26, 2007
The Birth of The King
About 15 years ago, a friend of mine took a seasonal job with UPS delivering packages between Halloween and mid-January. She was partnered up with a driver and while he delivered to one side of the street, she delivered to the other.
She said that he did not like Christmas (oh, UPS drivers, I'm sorry I ordered some stuff from LL Bean yesterday!). He preferred to celebrate the birth of the king in January.
I must say that I am suddenly very sympathetic to this mystery driver's position.
She said that he did not like Christmas (oh, UPS drivers, I'm sorry I ordered some stuff from LL Bean yesterday!). He preferred to celebrate the birth of the king in January.
I must say that I am suddenly very sympathetic to this mystery driver's position.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Elegance
I went to an anniversary party today for Paulo and Dre at Dre's parents' house.
They live in a big house with a big backyard. The yard has a pool with a hot tub in it, but I was more impressed with the stone pond with a fountain and two green copper herons at the edge and the stone patio with the stones all fitted together. Dre said this area had had a jungle gym in it when she and her siblings were kids, and that it took about twelve years for her dad to put in the pond and the patio.
I noticed in the bathroom that the hand towels matched the red and black bath towels that had a Chinese design printed on them. The foaming hand soap and the scent-matched hand lotion stood in bottles next to each other by the sink. In the living room, there were huge silk peonies on the coffee table, and there were ceramic pumpkins as the "fall accent" in every room. Granted, the house was dressed for a party, but the fact is, they had this stuff to set out. . .
When I see a Better Homes & Gardens or Sunset Magazine and I think, "That doesn't look like somewhere people live." But when I go to a house like Dre's parents', that is put together and spacious and pretty to look at, I'm still impressed - especially because it's obvious someone lives there, as I've been invited to come over. This isn't how my house looks! A few sets of owners ago included someone who had an eye for design, and it's clear he did some work on the place, including sponging a wall and painting a few other walls dark colors in otherwise light rooms. But now the little bathroom with green marbled counter tops and green toilet has purple towels in it. The blue bathroom has red towels in it. And we have no "accents" at all, though we have some art and photographs.
Our house is comfortable for us, and people tend to notice that we have a ballroom off the kitchen. It's about priorities, and we don't care about color matching towels (though the next set will be green and blue, if the rooms still are). We care about having space to dance in, so we do. We haven't been using it as much as have, or as much as we will again, but it's there waiting for us to get our shoes on.
They live in a big house with a big backyard. The yard has a pool with a hot tub in it, but I was more impressed with the stone pond with a fountain and two green copper herons at the edge and the stone patio with the stones all fitted together. Dre said this area had had a jungle gym in it when she and her siblings were kids, and that it took about twelve years for her dad to put in the pond and the patio.
I noticed in the bathroom that the hand towels matched the red and black bath towels that had a Chinese design printed on them. The foaming hand soap and the scent-matched hand lotion stood in bottles next to each other by the sink. In the living room, there were huge silk peonies on the coffee table, and there were ceramic pumpkins as the "fall accent" in every room. Granted, the house was dressed for a party, but the fact is, they had this stuff to set out. . .
When I see a Better Homes & Gardens or Sunset Magazine and I think, "That doesn't look like somewhere people live." But when I go to a house like Dre's parents', that is put together and spacious and pretty to look at, I'm still impressed - especially because it's obvious someone lives there, as I've been invited to come over. This isn't how my house looks! A few sets of owners ago included someone who had an eye for design, and it's clear he did some work on the place, including sponging a wall and painting a few other walls dark colors in otherwise light rooms. But now the little bathroom with green marbled counter tops and green toilet has purple towels in it. The blue bathroom has red towels in it. And we have no "accents" at all, though we have some art and photographs.
Our house is comfortable for us, and people tend to notice that we have a ballroom off the kitchen. It's about priorities, and we don't care about color matching towels (though the next set will be green and blue, if the rooms still are). We care about having space to dance in, so we do. We haven't been using it as much as have, or as much as we will again, but it's there waiting for us to get our shoes on.
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