Meme shame…and redemption? Oh, and a giveaway!

You know how when you’re going to do something, and you want to do it, but then you forget to do it, and then you feel guilty about not doing it so you don’t do it some more, then you feel even more guilty..

The very cool Libby of The Allergic Kid tagged me for a meme so long ago that I don’t want to mention it. I was on vacation. Then I came back. Then I had to wash my hair…ok, really, I sort of spaced on it. I admit without shame that if I don’t write something down in my planner, well, there are high chances that it will be forgotten forever and ever.

I was going to do the meme right away, out of respect for Libby who has a really great blog where she shares recipes & information about living with her young son’s allergies. She is also a fellow Daring Baker, which I think totally ups her coolness factor!

So without further ado, here are my Six Random Things :

1) The first time I permanently colored my hair it was an accident. I was 13, and it was the long weekend before school started and I slept over at a friend’s house. She was a year older, and my parents didn’t think she was a good influence on me (she wasn’t, but she was a sweetie). We bought this horrible ersatz of a hair coloring kit that was supposed to wash out after 3 shampoos or something. I went for the red, you know, because it’s discreet. My parents flipped out & I was SO grounded for I think 3 weeks. I think that dealing with my horrible hair should have been enough punishment, really, but not my parents. (No, they didn’t offer to help me dye it back to it’s original chestnut brown.)

2) I have extra tendons and ligaments in my lower leg/ankles. I also have a little extra bone that like one in 500,000 people have. I didn’t know this until there was a problem, though. I actually snapped off said bone in the left ankle/foot, dealt with horrible ankle pain, numerous cortisone shots & PT until the fourth orthopedic surgeon I went to see noticed it on the MRI and was like, “oh yeah, no biggie, and look at your extra stuff!”. As a dancer I was rather good at leaps, jumping & turning which was thought to be thanks to the extra propelling power of the super-legs. The downer is I don’t have extra muscles, so there is a great deal of extra tension on the supplemental muscle attachments. Go figure.

3) My first crush was Walter Cronkite. I was 2. My mother evidently had to wash the television screen daily because I would cover the screen in kisses. This began my interest in older men…and journalism and the media.

4) I didn’t ever want to get married or have children. As the eldest of a large family I grew up around tons of kids, and knew first-hand just how much sacrifice, time and commitment raising children represents. I love kids, and they love me (lost children in airports, giddy kids at a wedding reception…they always seem to gravitate towards me…) I thought that maybe when I hit my 40s I would adopt because there are so many great kids who don’t have a home of their own. M. Fish says he didn’t want to have children until we met, but after we were engaged he became kid crazy and talked me into it. I am thrilled that he did, because Guppy is so kick-ass, it’s freaking unbelievable!

5) I had a horrible, awful, terrible pregnancy (you don’t even want to ask me about the delivery), was sick all the time, and had to stop working at the beginning of my 4th month after the following : I was on the train to Paris to teach at the university and had a “spell” where I passed out (I had dizzy spells all the time, but hadn’t lost consciousness) and a very kind woman held me up, kept me from falling, then lugged me to the bathroom where I threw up for about 3 minutes in front of the entire wagon because the bathroom door was propped open by two people who were there to help the woman helping me. She held my very long hair for me & helped me clean up. The train was stopped so an ambulence could come & fetch me…so thank you incredibly amazing woman, and sorry to all you 500+ people who were an hour late for work because of me.

6) I once got to “drive” a train from Paris to the Charles DeGaulle airport. About 9 years ago I was in Paris for the summer (as I often was, dancing, falling in love, plotting ways to rid the world of capatalist tyranny…) and hélas, the day arrived when I had to leave (because my visa was expiring). I managed to get all of my stuff it the train just as it was about to take off, thanks to a kind and cute stranger who turned out the be the train’s conductor! About 5 minutes into the trip he poked his head out and asked me if I wanted to come up front and of course I said yes. There was another conductor up front, and the three of us had a ball during the nearly hour-long trip. They showed me how to pilot the train, what to do in case of an emergency – I even got to do the bi-lingual announcement over the loudspeaker about the train’s final destinaton! It did help me take my mind off of the heartbreak of leaving when I really wasn’t ready to.

So there you go! Generally, your answers don’t need to be so James-esque, but I wanted to try and make good on my lax meme etiquette.

Now I am suppsed to tag 6 people, but I’ll be tagging Shellyfish Style so, you’re tagged if :

1) You have ever danced along with the Lawrence Welk Show.

2) You still don’t understand how the hell Bush got to keep that phoney election in 2000.

3) You love Ani Difranco as much as I do.

4) You wish that you would have said yes, but didn’t.

5) You have fallen in love so hard that your breath caught in your throat at the sight of the object of your affection.

and 6) You keep your fortune cookie fortunes.

Now here’s what you need to do if you want to play along…

• Link to the person who tagged you (that would be me).
• Post the rules on the blog.
• Write six random things about yourself.
• Tag six people at the end of your post.
• Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
• Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Have fun kids, and stay tuned, because the next post is going to be very exciting & there’ll be a GIVEAWAY!!