I Got Tagged! Seven Random Things People Would Just as Soon Not Know About Me

Here are the rules:
1. List 7 random things about yourself that people may not know.
2. Link the person who sent this to you, and leave a comment on their blog so that their readers can visit yours.
3. Post the rules on your blog.
4. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, linking their blog. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I got tagged by Cousin Lu, so here it is. My only thing is that I don't actually have seven random people to tag. I'm not that sociable.

1. I still sleep with my baby blanket. Yes, I am mother of two myself and I still sleep with my baby blanket. It’s a large blanket that my great-grandmother, Mom Broggie, made for me as a baby gift for my mother before I was born. She used a Sesame Street fabric and sewed the batting and the hem herself. It has a lot of sentimental value to me and it still gives me a lot of comfort when I’m upset or can’t sleep. Plus it makes a really great head wrap when I have a migraine. It’s not that I have some weird unresolved childhood issue and I can’t live without it, because I could. I just like it, so bite me.

2. I have seven tattoos. Most people know that I have tattoos, but some of them are not as, um, visible as others. So I will now document the location, type and meaning of each of my tattoos. My first tattoo I got was on my right hip. It was the letters “gha”. I will not say whose name these letters stand for. Suffice it to say that it was someone I thought I was going to marry when I was young and impressionable and phenomenally stupid. That tattoo is now covered by a Chinese dragon and three Chinese symbols for peace, the ocean, and strength. My pregnancy with the twins completely ruined this tattoo and the dragon now looks like a condor. Because I learn life lessons by the two-by-four method, I then proceeded to get my second tattoo several years later on my right shoulder blade of someone’s initials, yet again, except this time it was “BTG”. I won’t say whose name this is either, but again, someone I thought I was going to marry and was in fact engaged to. I really do have lots of common sense. I just choose to ignore it. My third tattoo was a series of Chinese symbols on my right ankle meaning “one love for all of your life”. This was during my optimistic, rosy-spectacled phase before I became the pessimistic, cynical individual I am now. My fourth tattoo was yet another Chinese symbol on my right forearm meaning “ocean waves”. The beach is the be-all and end-all of my life and I feel closer to God and home there than I do any other place on earth. My fifth and sixth tattoos were also on my right forearm. One is another set of initials, but I will love and be loyal to this man for the rest of my life. That man is J.R.R. Tolkien. I have a passionate and undying love for The Lord of the Rings trilogy and have had since I was seven years old. The sixth tattoo is an Elvish word also from LOTR, “namarie”, which means “farewell with blessings”. The Lady Galadriel says this to Frodo when they’re leaving Lothlorien to go to Mordor. I look at that one and think of blessings for my life with each new day. My seventh and final tattoo (for now) is on my left hand between my thumb and forefinger that has the letters E and J hooked together, the J attached to the E. These are the first letters of my sons’ names, and they’re twins, hence the attached letters. So that’s all my tattoos for now, but I’m seriously considering another one. They really are like crack.

3. I read. A lot. I know this was supposed to be random, and anybody who knows me knows I love to read and have since I was four. But what people may not know about that is that I read seven to eight books a week. I’ve been told that I read really fast and how can I get the information if I’m reading so fast, but seriously, I don’t think I read fast. Or if I do it’s not fast to me. It’s just….reading. I love it and I devour books alive.

4. My cars (thanks Lu!) are also named, albeit not with the Wizard of Oz characters. My first car was a red Volvo 940 and my sister christened it something that I can’t remember now because I’m old and decrepit. My second car was a green Acura Vigor and we christened that one the Green Goblin, especially after a fender bender coming home from ASU one weekend and having to stop at some hokey Wal-Mart in the mountains to buy bungee cord to keep the hood from flapping up in front of the windshield like in Tommy Boy. I was really mad about this. My sister thought it was hilarious. My present vehicle is a black Jeep Grand Cherokee and it is my mechanical pride and joy. My sister (who has christened all of our cars) named this one Black Booty. I decided not to get a vanity plate with this on it because it sounds like a really bad multicultural porn. Of note, my sister’s first car, a silver Volvo, was named the Silver Bullet. The Silver Bullet just got consigned a few months ago to a salvage yard with many tears and a goodbye party. My sister then purchased a little tiny Yarus go-cart and named it the White Virgin, aka Little Moo.

5. I snore. Really bad, apparently, or so I’ve been told. Like, hold-on-Bessie-the-tractor-trailer’s-gonna-crash type snoring. I’ve been told that I actually choke myself at night and I’ve woken myself up before because I can’t breathe. This is what’s called sleep apnea. My dad also has sleep apnea and has to sleep with a CPAP machine that pumps pressured air into his nose and mouth to keep him breathing and not snoring. It’s been recommended that I start this too. I told my boyfriend about it and once he finished laughing uproariously and picked himself up off the floor (at the thought of me in an oxygen mask at night), we decided this might be a good idea and a fantastic method of birth control to boot.

6. I’m a huge fan of the Ladies Man. I loved this skit with Tim Meadows on Saturday Night Live and when they made the movie I was thrilled beyond words. Ladies Man: Hey, baby, can I buy you a fish thandwich?” Lady: “C’mon baby let’s go back to my place.” Ladies Man: “Well, um, we could take my car, but it is nonexithtent.” I love it!

7. I anthropomorphize my houseplants. It’s true. I have a philodendron that was given to me five years ago as a Christmas gift. His name is George and he sits in pride of place on top of my entertainment center. George is great because you can talk to him and he just listens quietly and doesn’t give you advice. He doesn’t eat much but he grows really fast and grooming him is a very relaxing task. He has graduated from the little plastic pot he came in to a slightly bigger terracotta pot, and now to a nice big stone planter with little green leaves stamped on it, and a plant stick in his soil that says “Live your Dreams”. George is awesome. My boys say hello to George every morning and fight over who’s going to water him. My sister’s philodendron she got for Christmas five years ago died and so George, being an organ donor, gave us a little bit of root and stem to put in a jar with some water and try to grow George Junior. My sister killed that one too.

Problems

So I'm standing outside the other night by the side door of my house, smoking a cigarette. My porch light, despite having a light bulb purported to be invisible to bugs and therefore won't attract any, attracts bugs like a magnet, regardless of the season. Lately I've seen one or two of those gi-normous "garden" spiders that I was told by my very competent exterminator are "harmless". I'm sure you know what I'm talking about - those massive, striped freaks of nature that build those huge ropey webs that stretch literally six feet across. I feel like I need a spear and a machete and Kevlar body armor whenever I go outside. Since I don't have any of those things readily available I go outside armed with my broom.

Well, there's been one of those spiders hanging out right in the corner of the house next to the door where I smoke. A spider that looks like it crawled out of Chernobyl. Jay is outside with me on this particular night. I'm all Mission Impossible 4 trying to keep my eye on it so I'll know exactly where it is the whole time I'm out there. So I take my eyes off of it for one second because Jay is teasing me about my arachnophobia. Which, admittedly, I do have.

It was only for a second. A split second. And that was all it took. I look back up and that decroded piece of crap spider is gone. Vanished. And Jay is like, is this a problem for you that you can't see where he went?

This is a problem like herpes is a problem. Like climbing Mount Everest in a string bikini and stripper heels is a problem.

I still haven't found it. I'm so getting a machete.

Inspiration

Okay, so I was all inspired by Cousin Lu's redesigned blog and decided I had to keep up with the times. However, I may have gone just a bit overboard. But then, I tend to do that during basketball season. Everything turns a perplexing shade of light blue and I find myself with a Tourette's-like display of various Tarheel fight songs, cheers, and expletives regarding whatever game is still replaying in my head.

My boyfriend always says that as soon as basketball season rolls around we do this whole Freaky-Friday-Body-Snatchers thing where we have this inexplicable role reversal. I'm on the couch with a cup of herbal tea (read: Corona) watching the game (or having the score texted to my cell phone at two and a half minute intervals if I can't watch it on TV or listen to it on the radio), and I'm wearing all my Heels gear and screaming incoherently at the TV at intervals. I refuse to make any plans whatsoever on the days that I know there are games. He, on the other hand, is now standing around with his arms crossed complaining that I'm not paying any attention to him. And I'm all, after the freaking game, already. Now move. I can't see the shot clock.

See, he's from up north. Way up north. Yep, one 'o them thar Yankees. He's from Massachusetts, but he's lived here in North Carolina since he was eleven. He is now twenty-nine. (and he still thinks if we drive a couple of hours in either direction it'll be something straight out of Deliverance.) He still doesn't get the whole basketball thing down south, because apparently up north they have some weird sport called "hockey". I've tried several times to explain that this is just the way I grew up, that I love basketball anyway and for heaven's sake every member of my family graduated from UNC except for me. And I have a big family.

But he doesn't get it. At all. He actually leaves the house when there's a game on and refuses to watch it with me. Unless Carolina is playing Boston College, and then he watches and cheers for Boston College, just to see me have a myocardial infarction because he is on the brink of death, Deliverance-style, in my house. And he always goes, I don't understand why you southern people who love basketball always say "we" when you're talking about your team. It's not like you're out there playing, right? So, how is it "we"?

He's not a very big sports fan. But that's okay. Because I have enough team spirit for both of us.

So, anyway. Basketball season is here, the season opener was tonight against Davidson, we won. I like my ram on this new page, but I'm not sure about the basketballs. I'll think about it.....

Family

I remember as a kid the excitement and anticipation that was always associated with Thanksgiving and Christmas. That hasn’t really changed much, but then I don’t think I’ve really grown up much either. And I’ll tell you, a lot of the anticipation had to do with the fact that my family did the same thing every year. The “same thing” might sound really boring and whatever, but it wasn’t at all.

I have an extremely close-knit extended family. Growing up, this was no big deal to me. I thought this was just what families did and why should my family be any different from anybody else’s? The older I got, though, the more I realized that there was a reason for the expressions of surprise and even envy on the faces of my friends when I described my family’s holiday traditions. My family really is the exception to the rule I think, in more ways than one.

I remember every year piling in the car with my sister and my mom and my dad to drive the few miles to Grandmother and Granddaddy’s house. They had lived there literally for as long as I could remember and we went there all the time just to visit, and every single Thanksgiving and Christmas without fail. There was always the excitement of seeing my cousins and aunts and uncles that we hadn’t seen for awhile maybe, and my sister Betsy and I would start planning weeks ahead of time and counting down the days. We also have a large family – my mother is one of five sisters, all of whom have at least one daughter if not more, and there are a couple of sons thrown in for good measure.

There are lots of things I remember particularly about those days. I remember the Scary Guy who lived next door to my grandparents who was very mysterious, and we made up stories about him that scared the living hell out of us. I remember the basement that was crammed full of old toys and dress-up clothes and dolls and stuffed animals, and how the basement would get really spooky if you were down there by yourself, and how you wanted to look over your shoulder in the dark but just squeezed your eyes shut instead and ran back up the stairs. I remember the stool my grandmother used to sit on and smoke her cigarettes, dye Easter eggs, shell pecans, and distribute cookies from the huge cookie jar she kept for us young ones. I remember late at night after the meals when the kids would be playing outside, one or two of us would run inside to use the bathroom or get a snack and see all the grownups sitting together, talking about Deep Things, and we would wonder how they could be so insufferably boring all the time. I remember making a jump rope out of Grandmother’s old scarves tied together end-to-end and attached at one end to the stair railing in the basement so you only needed two people to jump rope. I remember the little shed and the pile of things next to it in the backyard that Grandaddy kept so carefully organized, and how we kids would go out there to build a fort, usually under the direction of Allie. I realized a few years ago thinking back on it that our grandfather never once in all those years said a word about us messing up his stuff. Never once, and he always went out after we left and cleaned everything up in his slow, purposeful way. He is a man of few words, but a huge heart. I remember the huge spreads of home-cooked food on the old gold-flecked Formica countertops in the kitchen. I remember the old organ that used to sit on the other side of the kitchen that barely played, but it would if you banged really hard on the sticky keys. I remember the piano in the “parlor” that we cousins who knew how would play at Christmas. I remember all of us crammed into that selfsame parlor every Christmas, surrounded by our grandmother’s elaborate Christmas decorations and the tree and all the lights, and piles of wrapping paper and all the moms reminding the cousins to say thank you to whoever for their gifts. I remember every single Christmas Grandmother and Granddaddy giving each cousin a Christmas ornament, a tradition we didn’t much care for as kids. But now? Every time I decorate my tree for my own kids at Christmas, and I hang those ornaments on my tree, the memories of all those Christmases past and the memories of my grandmother make me smile. She loved Christmas.

We lost Grandmother a few years ago. Towards the end she really couldn’t speak much, or chose not to because it required too much effort and pain. I remember when I brought my boys, just three days old and fresh out of the hospital right after Thanksgiving, she indicated by gestures that she wanted to hold them. I will never forget that day. She sat in her old rocking chair with a pillow on her lap and the boys on the pillow, just rocking and rocking and looking at them. She sat like that for hours. Not too long after that day she passed away, and most of the family was there at her home to be with her. The sisters, her daughters, joined hands around her bed, my grandfather on his knees beside her, holding her hand. Someone started to sing a hymn, one of her favorites. She died surrounded by the people who loved her the most.

That is what our family is, and has always been, about.

Things are different now. We feel the loss of Grandmother keenly when we’re together. The cousins are all grown and we have lives and families of our own. There are great-grandchildren for Grandaddy and new husbands and wives, new boyfriends and girlfriends, and new fiancés. Some of us are no longer there – divorce has affected us too. Some of us are now one who used to be two, and some of us are five where we used to be one. Some of us have been touched by the horror and uncertainty of the war in Iraq. Some of us have graduated high school, college or grad school. Some of us have new jobs, new houses, new babies. Our views on life have changed perhaps as we’ve changed and grown. Holiday celebrations are no longer at Grandmother and Granddaddy’s house. That house with its rooms filled with memories was sold after my grandmother’s death. I remember though, every time I drive by the street. We go to different places now, homes of aunts and uncles.

The one thing that’s never changed about these holiday celebrations is that everywhere we go, wherever we end up for whatever holiday or special occasion, there is always, always love there, and constant laughter. No matter how much things have changed for each individual person or family, the heartache and loss we’ve survived, births and deaths we’ve blessed and let go, all the little things that make up this eclectic mixture of people we call family, that love has never changed. Ever. And it never will. We cousins who remember this stuff may not be kids anymore, but those memories will stay with us forever. They really were, and are, a defining force in our lives, and I am so thankful that I get to experience this kind of love and this kind of family. Now we watch our own kids (and innumerable and beloved dogs) play with each other, and we’re the ones who sit and talk about Deep Things. And now we understand. We sit and we tell stories of when we were little and laugh until we cry and some of us are more than a little tipsy. And every time we get together, we build and we build and we build, and we learn something new about each other and poke fun at each other for the stupid things we’ve done growing up.

We’re different now, but still the same. Always the same. I love and cherish each and every one of them.

Spreading Christmas Cheer Betsy-Style

Gist of a phone conversation with my sister, Betsy, as she sits in a bar in Chapel Hill on a particularly bad day for her. For those of you who don't know my sister, she has that wonderful personality trait of having just as much fun by herself as she does with other people and doesn't think twice about doing things that may make other people think she's weird. Culturally or socially acceptable means absolutely nothing to her, and people love her for it. Also, for those of you who don't know her, she is very beautiful and has a magnetic personality and is no stranger at all to guys trying to pick her up on a regular basis, even ones that know she's married. She's so cool.

Betsy: So my day really really sucked.

Me: Really? Why?

Betsy: Well, (goes into a long conversation about how people at her then-job were driving her insane and how ridiculous they were that particular day, and other things that I will not mention here to protect the identities of people involved.)

Me: Oh. Wow, that really sucks, Bets. I'm sorry.

Betsy: Yeah, so now I'm sitting here in this random bar in Carrboro because I really needed to just come and sit by myself and have a drink and smoke a cigarette and recharge, you know?

Me: Yeah.

Pause in the conversation as I hear a guy come up to my sister in the bar and try to pick her up. He says, hey baby, you look -

She doesn't miss a beat. Doesn't turn around, just whips up the hand holding the cigarette so all the guy can see is the back of her head and her hand in his face holding a cigarette, and without batting an eyelash and without her facial expression changing one iota, she immediately interrupts and says:

Nope, sorry. The inn is full.

And goes right on talking to me as though nothing in the world has just happened.

I wish I was that cool.

Intellectual Musing

Okay, so this is my most recent intellectual musing, my sister Betsy being Exhibit A.

When one wishes to quit smoking, one might decide to sashay to the local drugstore and pick up a box of nicotine patches. First line of attack, right? Nicotine patches. Easy, breezy, beautifully simple. Rip it open, slap it on, and grit your teeth for the long haul. Perhaps you know someone who has tried to quit smoking before. It ain't pretty. You shake, you're nervous and irritable, your head is pounding and your mouth is dry, your stomach is upset. Everything you see reminds you of cigarettes. You'll be driving down the road chewing your nails to the quick because you're not smoking while you're driving. You pull up to a stoplight, glance out the window and down onto the shoulder of the road where you see, say, a toothpick. Immediately the nicotine receptors in your brain go into kamikaze mode and the only thing you can think about is a cigarette. I mean, even the lovely shade of metallic green of the car next to you reminds you of the green packaging of a box of Marlboro Menthol Lights.

It really is pretty terrible.

So, my sister decided to quit smoking. She goes to the store and buys a few dozen boxes of nicotine patches. (To me this is like helping a heroin junkie come off of heroin by giving them more heroin, except they don't have to stick themselves with a dirty needle. But whatever.) So she buys the patches, feels fantastic, she's finally going to quit smoking after numerous tries. She triumphantly throws the very last cigarette away and opens the box of nicotine patches.

I get a call from Betsy a few hours later. I want an update on how she's feeling, is she all motivated and whatnot, do the patches work. There's an ominous pause. I'm like, Betsy. What are you doing? And she says, smoking a cigarette. And I go, oh, so the patches don't really work then. And she goes, no, no, they do. It's just so much easier to light a cigarette than it is to get through the packaging to the actual patch.

Which is so true. If the manufacturer of these patches really had any idea how fast we smokers need to be able to get into those patches and slap one on, the packaging would dissolve in your mouth in nanoseconds. I mean, you're really really needing a cigarette, but you stand firm. You refuse to smoke your emergency cigarette. So you're clawing frantically at the wrapper on the patch screaming at the voices to shut up and the ghost of your dead parakeet to get off your freaking shoulder already, and you can't get into the patch. So to save your sanity, you go and light up.

This is false advertising. How can it possibly help your cravings if you can't get the blasted thing open, much less stuck to whatever patch of flesh you can most quickly reach? IT CAN'T.

Rules for Roommates

Here are just a few tips and pointers for those of us who live with a roommate or spouse. I have found these to be very useful in a trial and error sort of way.

• If you have a driveway that is exactly wide enough for one vehicle and you know that vehicle has to get in and out quite frequently, it would make sense then not to park behind it. This will save you the trouble of working yourself into a fit of high dudgeon when the owner of the blocked-in vehicle asks you to move it.
• There is, for your convenience, an innovative contraption located directly next to the sink called a dishwasher. Because it’s so close to the sink, so close that you don’t even have to move, try opening that door one day and check it out. That’s where we put our dishes when your roommate doesn’t feel like washing your crap by hand, which will most likely be quite frequently. It washes the dishes for us. That being said, the drying rack in the sink with the clean dishes in it is for clean dishes. Not the dirty ones you put in there because you felt like the other side of the sink was boring. The technological marvel of the dishwasher does, however, have the annoying setback of being unable to empty or load itself. Thusly, it may require that you move your hand about six inches from the sink to the open dishwasher to place your dirty dish inside. I know this is asking a lot, but it really does work.
• Silverware doesn't work well in the disposal.
  
• Putting a coffee mug or cereal bowl in the sink and filling it with water and leaving it for your roommate to decide what to do with doesn’t count as cleaning it up.
• If you decide to take it upon yourself to clean the kitchen, oh happy day, it is much appreciated. However, due to the bleaching properties of bleach, colored and/or decorative dish towels should not only not be used to clean the counters, but they should certainly not be used with bleach to clean the counters.
• If your roommate has told you a hundred times not to turn the temperature on the clothes dryer up past low (because it gets very, very hot and will shrink your clothes) , this is for your own good and the good of your clothes, and thus you have no reason to complain or point fingers when your favorite pair of winter socks comes out of the dryer as a pair of finger condoms.
• If you are a male roommate and you are above the age of five, there’s no excuse for pee on the toilet seat. You have no problem finding and aiming at other things, so you shouldn’t have any problems with the comparative Grand Canyon of the toilet bowl.
• If you are a male roommate and you use all the toilet paper on the roll, please replace it with a new roll. The reasoning behind this is simple. Women use toilet paper every single time they use the toilet versus your once or twice a day, and drip-drying is really unpleasant, as is looking like a stroke victim as we lurch across the bathroom searching for another role of toilet paper.
• No one is interested in the reasons why you can’t find the dirty clothes hamper.
• If you are a female roommate: While your efforts at maintaining a shower drain clear of hair are appreciated, it is a bit off-putting to find that the shower wall looks like it’s grown a pelt.
• Open tin cans in the refrigerator are gross. Not only is it unsanitary, but the fact that there’s even a possibility that the remaining contents of that open tin can will be ingested is just vile. Not that botulism isn’t fun or anything.
• For male roommates, when you shave your face it would be lovely if you would wipe up the beard/nose/ear hair clippings out of the sink.
• A word of advice – do not use a fork to scrape your scrambled eggs out of your roommate’s Teflon nonstick frying pan. For those of you who are unaware, the pointed fork tines will ruin the nonstick coating, thus making the pan no longer coated with Teflon, and thus rendering the pan useless for nonstick cooking activities. Note: Nonstick cookware is generally not what we would call generously priced.
  
• Do not leave items made of plastic on a hot stove. Fire Education 101: They will melt.
• If you are making toast in the toaster, generally toast only requires a minute or so of toasting, even to get nice and black and crunchy. If your toast bursts into flames you’ve probably had it in there too long, and there’s nothing like having your kitchen smell like charred buffalo for two weeks.
• It is detrimental when you berate your roommate when you discover that you have no clean clothes. Last time I checked, you can’t deposit quarters into your roommate’s open mouth and expect your clothes to get clean. This was most likely not a dispensation in your lease agreement.
• Do not use a sponge relegated specifically to cleaning the bathroom or the cat's litterbox to wash dishes. If you choose to do so, please mark the area where you store these dishes with your name so as to avoid confusion.
• It's a funny thing about houses - they burn down. Just because the oven dial says that the gas is turned to low does not mean it's off. There is a difference between "low" and "off". You'll remember this perhaps as you drift off into a delightful carbon monoxide-induced eternal sleep, or when the house spontaneously combusts when you light that candle.
  

There is, however, a solution to all of these problems that will restore the roommate relationship and create harmony and peace in the home:

Live alone.