OK, I feel kind of silly doing this, so I'd better hurry up and do it tonight while I'm in the youthful 25-34 demographic. And after all, I was tagged! I feel so popular!

Here are the rules. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits or embarrassing things about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

8 Random Facts / Habits About Me:

1. I like to follow the rules. Thus it would be painful for me to *not* follow the rules by skipping writing this blog. Sometimes I can't even tell how I feel about following the rules. I probably like writing this blog, because I love to over-divulge whenever possible. But I don't like to like following the rules, so I wish I were rebelling right now.

2. I love my daughter, I have a hard time being a mother sometimes, I always wanted children, and I still haven't completely tied up the part of my heart that wants more children. I'm indecisive complex like that. Jury still out on whether more kids will come to pass and, if so, whence they'll come.

3. When I obsess about something, I do it professionally. I cannot rest until it is finished. I dream about it. I talk about it constantly. Now that the Internet exists, I Google it interminably. I cannot let it go, and a little bit of my heart always is devoted to that thing. This has applied to The Cure, Little Debbie Nutty Bars, Camel Lights, my 1972 Volvo, organic gardening, making my own crazy quilt, going on road trips to New Mexico, and the head massage I got from the specially assigned shampooer at a hair salon in Soho. Latest additions: My other blog, spinning wool, and living on a farm one day (this one is recurring).

4. When I was a junior in high school, my wardrobe consisted primarily of creepers and Doc Martens, black knit pants pegged in at the ankle, a wide variety of black (or in a pinch, burgundy) T-shirts, and (a) my father's old cardigan sweaters or (b) thrift-store sweaters that looked like my father's old cardigan sweaters. I had an asymmetrical haircut and spent my weekends at Paris on the Platte or at various new-wave teen clubs, looking cool, smoking clove cigarettes and not ever being asked out by boys.

5. For many years, I said the year I was 15 was the hardest of my life. I was extremely depressed. I almost tried to kill myself one afternoon, but I was so scared that I fainted and spilled the huge bottle of pills all over the floor. I got brave enough to tell my mother, and she took me only to a crazy therapist whom I couldn't understand, and I quit after two sessions. We moved during the summer, and I spent three months teaching myself a year's worth of high school German and memorizing the conjugations of all 200-some irregular verbs. I wound up better. The years I was 33-34 were worse, because this time I had grown-up responsibilities on top of the dread. I'm better again.

6. My natural inclination is to turn just about anything into a reason to berate myself. This is part personality, part astrology (I'm a three-planet Virgo with Scorpio rising), part upbringing (I just saw a survey on "schemas" -- mine were Unrelenting Standards, Emotional Deprivation and Subjugation). Fortunately, I'm finally working through some of this and loosing its bonds. I'd love to talk about this more, but I know you are thinking how self-centered I am I'm really busy. If this is incoherent, please blame it on the fact that I have a fever. I think the fever is God's little way of telling me I ought to sit down and relax for a while tomorrow (it's my birthday). Or else He is just plain mean.

7. I never forget anybody, although as I'm getting older I sometimes forget people's names right when I'm introduced to them (they say the short-term memory goes first, right?). The not-forgetting is both blessing and curse. I hang onto people in my mind and heart much longer than they hang on to me, I think. That's why, for no good reason, I'm awfully curious about what happened to my high school boyfriend, Eric Shea. Thanks for giving me a new outlook on life by letting me know you were into me, Eric! Too bad you were such a jerk in the end! If you know him, update me. He has a Calvin & Hobbs tattoo on his bicep … uh huh. (It didn't go that great with his Mohawk, IMHO.)

8. My favorite drink is a Maker's Mark neat. This causes bartenders all kinds of consternation -- I think because I'm a lady. Thus, this drink solves the needs of my taste buds and the inner super-tough chick that lurks beneath my prissy-Virgo, worked-in-PR, newly-turned-soccer-mom exterior. My favorite response to my ordering my favorite drink was when the waiter at Goosetown Tavern brought me an (unordered) glass of water with the bourbon "because that drink seems awfully dry." Thanks, man -- you have given me an endless number of jokes about the non-liquid quality of something that is, by its very definition, a beverage, which must needs be … liquid. Wow, that blows my mind.


I tag..

Adela
Soo J. Kim
Julia
Aeski
Lance
Epstein Barbie (where the heck have you been?)
J Chris Rock (and make it funny, dammit!)
And Claire (let's take it Canadian!)


Merci.