Friday, May 23, 2008

Meme tag

Okay, my friend Andy tagged me with this meme days ago, so I'd better get to it...

Favorite person (outside family)? I have a few BFFs that I've been friends with for years (and in one case, decades) now, and they all rate "favorite person" status in my book. In the online world, I adore my fellow Beat Cats - a great group of women and I'm happy and humbled to be friends with them all.


Favorite food? My favorite food category is also my dietary downfall: dairy! From cheese to butter to sour cream to ice cream, I just love dairy products. Especially cheese. And ice cream. Thank goodness my second-favorite food groups are fruits and veggies, otherwise I'd be in real trouble!

Quirks about you? Isn't this the same as the various things I keep blogging about? Well, let me think of a new one.... hmmm. Here's one I don't think I've mentioned yet: I am part shark! Okay, not really, but I did have an extra set of adult teeth that started making their presence known when I was just a tiny tot. That led to eons of orthodontia (I'm fairly certain Drs. Wright and Sterritt are now comfortably ensconced in their respective palatial island villas thanks to my wonkiest of teeth) and also many, many, many pulled teeth. Too bad the Tooth Fairy only handed out a quarter per tooth at the most back then - I could have my own (albeit slightly less palatial) island villa by now if she'd been paying out at today's rates!

How would the person who loves you most describe you in ten words or less? Patient, loyal, talkative, funny, high-maintenance and a little bit crazy.

Any regrets in life? Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention... I guess the thing that I regret the most is a bad relationship I stayed in for much too long and for allowing myself to continue believing that loving someone enough could make them change, even when I was getting hurt on a daily basis - it took me a long time to acknowledge that there are just some people out there in the world who are irredeemably, unrepentantly bad. I also regret ever wishing for time to pass more quickly when I was younger because these days, it goes by much too fast!

Favorite Charity/Cause? I'm all about Sensory Processing Disorder and children with special needs these days (hmmm, I wonder why?) and since in general I'm a bleeding heart liberal, I believe in many, many causes (and hopefully the next US President believes in some of them too...change we can believe in...)

Favorite Blog recently? Does I Can Has Cheezburger count? I am presently a teensy bit obsessed with turning our real life kitty into a LOLcat, so I've been alternately stalking her with my digital camera and spending large chunks of time poring over the latest LOLcats (and laughing a lot) while I wait to capture the perfect shot. (No one ever accused me of having a lack of ambition!)

Something you can’t get enough of? My family, Scrabulous, fresh fruit, time in the day, George Clooney and endurance to adequately up my workouts at the gym.

Worst job you’ve ever had? Telemarketing - I lasted one evening! It was a gig through a temp agency that Hubby - then just my boyfriend - and I signed up for one summer during college. The job was poorly explained to us and turned out to be terrible. We both hated it and barely made it through our shift. At the end of the night, we went to get our timecards signed by the supervisor, who was upset because apparently it was a multi-week assignment (we'd been told by the temp agency that it was just for that one night) and it was a struggle to even get paid since he said we were quitting. It was a misunderstanding and we legitimately only thought we were going to be working that one night, but even if we had initially agreed to do the whole stint, we would've quit. Ugh!

A close second to that job was the summer I dog-sat for some friends of my parents who owned, bred and showed AKC dogs - mostly pugs, along with some bulldogs and a couple of boxers. The dogs lived in crates in this big, basement kennel and had to be let out into the dog run (a large yard) several times a day. Let me just say that me and dog poop? We don't mix well. The smell of dog poop induces my barf reflex faster than any other smell on Earth. I can take cat barf, kid barf, any other animal or human waste, really, but there's something about dog poop... even thinking about cleaning out the crates (some of the dogs weren't entirely housebroken) or scooping the dog run now, over 20 years later, makes me want to vomit.

What job would you pay NOT to have? Dog poop cleaner (ha ha ha)... Podiatrist or pedicurist, dentist, slaughterhouse worker... there are a lot of jobs out there I would not want to attempt, no matter what the salary!

Favorite Bible verse right now? Well, there's always good, old John 3:16, can't go wrong with that one. Also, Philippians 4:4-9 and 1 Corinthians 13. Those aren't my "right now" favorites as much as my "all time" favorites.

Guilty Pleasure? Bad television, well-buttered and salted popcorn (real butter, please, none of that "golden-flavored oil" crap they try to give you at the movies) and wearing jammies for as much of my day as I can possibly get away with.

Got any confessions? I bite my nails. I also don't thoroughly rinse out the milk jugs before I throw them in the recycling bin. There may be others, but not that I'll 'fess up to here and now.

If you HAD to spend $1,000 on YOURSELF, how would you spend it? I'd buy a mega-supply of the daily, disposable contact lenses that are now the only kind I am able to wear. They're more than twice the cost per box of my former lenses, so $1000 would cover me for a little less than two years' worth of daily lens wear. I'd stretch it out, of course - I betcha I could make $1000 worth of lenses last me at least 3 years.

Favorite thing about your house? Our yard, which Hubby and I put in - every last blade of grass, tree, shrub and plant. We had our house built, so when we moved in, there was no yard, just uneven, rock-filled clay covered with a scant, pitiful layer of "top soil" that did nothing to improve the quality of what lurked underneath. Close second: the kiddo's room, which is the only room in our house that we've "done" (paint, border, etc) in the 8.5 years we've lived here. The rest of our walls are the original eggshell white the builders painted them. Pathetic, I know.

Least favorite thing about your house? Lack of a playroom/rec room for the kiddo, in which to house her stuff. It'd be awfully nice to have a coffee table instead of a mini-trampoline in the living room, for example... Another full bathroom would be nice, too. And having walls that were painted with something better than the "scuffs, stains and chips easily" finish in eggshell white, especially in the kitchen and bathrooms. (And painted by someone other than Hubby and/or me.)

One thing you’re good at? Being a mom. Not to boast or anything, but it has been my favorite job and the thing I'm most proud of, and I do think I'm pretty good at it most days.

If you could change something about your circumstances, what would it be? I would make us wealthy enough that our retirement and the kiddo's higher education were assured, and that our parents' retirements (which are much closer to reality) also were financially secure.

Who would you like to meet someday? All my Beat Cat friends. Preferably in a tropical location with delicious, frozen, fruity beverages on hand.

Who is your real life hero? My husband.

What is the hardest part of your job? Well, I'm a stay-at-home mom, so the hardest part of my job is the paycheck - or lack thereof, I suppose. Seriously, though, there are times when being the parent of a child with SPD can be pretty challenging, either from dealing with the kiddo herself or the wider world in relation to the kiddo. Some people just don't get it, and that can make things tough.

When are you most relaxed? When I'm home, in my jammies, with my family, snuggled under one of the pile of throw blankets on the back of the couch with the cat purring on my feet.

What stresses you out? Money, the rising cost of gas and groceries, when someone in my family is stressed out (or my friends), when the kiddo is having a bad day, wondering exactly where our country is headed and if the best candidate will be our next president...

What can you not live without? My family.

Do you agree or disagree with the recent article that reported that blogs are authored by narcissists? I'd be willing to venture that more bloggers than not are narcissists, but aren't we all to some degree, blogs or no?

Why do you blog? I enjoy reading other folks' blogs, so I figured maybe someone out there would enjoy reading mine. (Yep, narcissistic - there ya go!)

Who are you tagging? Like my dear friend Coco, I'm going to defy the Meme Rule Gods. Anyone out there who reads this and blogs and feels like playing, consider yourself tagged. Please link back so we know you did!

And here are the RULES, which I kinda disregarded for #3:
1. Answer the questions
2. Link back to whoever tagged you
3. Tag eight bloggers to do the same, 2 from each category:
New/ newer bloggers (since we want to share the love and send them traffic)
Bloggy friends
Bloggers you’d like to get to know better
Bloggers you don’t think will respond, but you hope will.

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