I was tagged...

I was tagged by my beautiful cousin, Julie, mama to Athena, Zoe and Baby Boy Liebel. She was my first friend to have a blogspot that I followed religiously. It was so great to be able to see so many pictures and stories of Athena and Zoe while they were living in New York. Slowly, several more friends began their own blogs and I finally jumped on the bandwagon...but Julie was the first!

Let the randomness begin...

1. Crickets terrify me. For the longest time (as in up until a year ago), I would wake my dad up at all hours of the night to kill them. If it was 3am and there was a cricket in my bathroom, it would have to be eliminated. Immediately. For years I was unable to tell you exactly what it was about them that scared the bahjeezuz out of me. I was finally able to pinpoint it to the fact that they jump. What if the cricket jumped and accidentally touched me??? I just might not be able to handle that.

2. I can name every single preposition in alphabetical order. In sixth grade, while learning to diagram sentences, my teacher said the only way to spot a prepositional phrase in a sentence was to know every single commonly used preposition by heart. She began reciting them in groups of three prepositions (ie Aboard, about, above...)at a time and had the class repeat them after her. I am fairly confident that I am the only one in the class who still remembers them to the sing-songy chant that Mrs. Rivera taught them in...are you ready? Here it goes: Aboard, about above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, by, down, during, except, for, from, in, into, like, near, of, off, on, onto, out, outside, over, past, since, than, through, throughout, to, toward, towards, under, underneath, until, with, within, without.

3. Technically, I have only lived in California BUT I feel like I have lived in Tennessee and Hawaii. I attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville for my master's degree program. It was a modified distance program that required me to spend about one week every month in Tennessee for two years. So while, I never officially "lived" there, I definitely lived there. While Corey officially lived in Hawaii for four years, I feel like I unofficially lived there for four years. I have been to Oahu over 15 times for periods of time ranging from 4 days to 2 weeks at a clip. A part of my heart will always be there. It was where I fell in love, had the highest emotional highs and the lowest lows. In the last year or so there, I would even find myself understanding the local pidgin dialect and picking up a slight "Hawaii" accent. And my flip-flops will always be slippers (slip-PAHS)!

4. Coleslaw makes me vomit. I seriously feel queasy just writing about it. It also makes my two brothers vomit. We have always hated it and refused to eat it. One day, when Matt was about 12, I was 10 and Mark was 6, my parents decided that this was going to stop. We had family friends at the house and my parents were embarrassed that all 3 of us did not want to eat the coleslaw that had been brought over. So they decided to force us to eat it. Bad idea Superparents! One by one, we tried to eat it. I do believe Mark was the first to try a spoonful, but as he tried to force it down, he gagged, and barfed it up along with the rest of his dinner... While Mark was crying with vomit dripping from his nose, I was the next child to attempt to force it down... Mid-esophagus, it came back up all over the kitchen table... now whether it was that nasty, nasty coleslaw or simply the fact that Mark and I had vomited all over the table, I do not know, but 30 seconds later Matt regurgitated HIS coleslaw all over his plate... My parents have never forced us to try to eat something since that fateful day. And all 3 of us STILL hate coleslaw at ages 29, 26 and 23.

5. I recycle religiously. I have a mini-recycling center in my garage with bins for paper, plastic, aluminum and glass. I have taken to cleaning with homemade "green" cleaners. I am adamently against the excessive buying of crates of plastic water bottles. I am dying for an energy efficient front-loading washing machine. I heard the polar bears were resorting to canabalism due to global warming and over-fishing issues and shed a tear. Corey says I'm only a few issues away from voting for Ralph Nader. Now, I don't know about that but I do admit to talking to a Greenpeace volunteer outside of Vons for 30 minutes yesterday...

6. I have a scary good memory. (See #2) I can remember what I was wearing on Father's Day in 1984. I was 2 1/2 years old. (Purple shorts with a cabbage patch kid t-shirt.) I remember being sad in the Green Room in preschool because Shawn didn't want to play house with me. I remember the words and choreography to my kindergarten island play. I remember the batting line-up for my first softball team when I was 7 years old (Shannon, Nancy, Allison, Amanda, Rachel, Crystal, Erica, Laura, Bobbie Jo, Kari). I remember that Daniela Valentini and Robbie Fitzroy were absent on the day to our trip to Green Meadows farm in first grade. I remember the words to all the poems I wrote in third grade at Young Writer's Camp. I remember phone numbers of people that I have not called in 15 years. I remember everything that is completely nonsensical and unimportant.

7. Shoes make me feel claustrophobic. I wear a size 10 1/2. They do not make size 10 1/2 in 99.9% of shoe brands. Which means I have 2 options: wear a size 10 and have blistery and aching feet or wear a size 11 and have them slip off. Obviously, I would go for the latter option but to add insult to injury, I can rarely find a size 11! As a result, I usually wear shoes that are just tight enough to pinch my toes and make me miserable. So I only like to wear flip-flops. I wore my $3 Old Navy flip flops in Nashville until the temperature went below 40 degrees. I wear my flips year round in California (even when it is raining). I take my heels off and replace them with flip flops approximately 1 hour into every wedding and fancy event I attend. When I leave work, I take my shoes off in the car and replace them with flip flops. It is the only way I can live my life.

Tagging:

Aunt Diane
Liz
Michelle
Heidi
Julie
Mia
Aunt Seana