Random trivia about me

Thanks to my friend Kat who inspired me with her blog entry listing 50 things about her. This is not quite 50, but this is what I came up with as I contemplated going to the job I really hate. I don't normally hate my job, but I am doing someone else's job right now, until someone is hired, which won't be for at least three weeks if I'm being optimistic. I've already been doing it for three weeks. It is getting a little better. It's interesting, but I'm too stressed doing a job I don't fully understand, especially because this was not my choice. But as the person who is training me says, "I'm doing the best I can (and that's all I can do), and then I'm letting it go ..." Good advice. The other good advice he gave me is telling my boss, "I want results, not excuses." That cracks me up every time. I am getting a lot of support from my boss ... which is especially nice considering who my boss is, not the most sensitive or supportive person I've ever known. Of course, he knows how screwed they'd be if I quit ... which I briefly fantasized about. But I'm not that kind of person. I can't walk out on my responsibilities and obligations. And I try to get it done right.

Without further ado, in order to make up my long absence and inconsistent participation in blogging, I present Random Trivia About Me:

I still hold my hands in the 10 and 2 position on the steering wheel when I drive. I always use my turn signals. I consider myself the better driver between my husband and me, but I have had more accidents that are my fault (one, with another car; a few if you count stationary objects) since we've met.

I like to write, but I rarely do it anymore. An English professor thought I should try to publish a short story I wrote. ... I never did. My college philosophy teacher wanted me to revise and publish an essay I wrote on ... something philosophical. I don't even remember what now. I even was offered a full-time reporting job once ... Ironic because I hate interviewing people. I had finished a reporting internship (which I only took because an adviser strongly suggested it and set the entire thing up), and they liked my work. Back in the seventh grade, I wrote an essay on Francis Marion, Swamp Fox of the American Revolution. I got a medal and was invited to tea with the Daughters of the American Revolution. My essay was read. ... I can't remember whether I read it or one of the ladies did. ... I'm a little blurry on the details now. But I remember the ladies loved my story.

More than writing, I love to read. In the third grade, my teacher (who also taught my dad in elementary school) sent me home for the summer with three big cardboard boxes filled with books. I read them all. And I still read a lot. I often still start and finish a book on the weekend. I stick mostly to mysteries and novels. ... I get enough nonfiction at my day job.

I get crushes easily.

My husband is the only person I ever kissed more than once on a first date. I did kiss one other boyfriend on a first date, but I fretted about it for days afterward.

My husband took me to Burger King at midnight for our first "date." (Give him a break, though. We worked nights at a daily newspaper, and that's when we got off work. Nothing else was open.) My husband knew what he wanted ... I'd only worked there a week when he invited me to Burger King. Thinking back, I was pretty naive ... getting into a relative stranger's car in a town where I knew no one and then going back to his apartment to watch a movie. But he was a gentleman, and about six and a half years later, we got married, so it all worked out.

When I was a toddler, I stuck my finger in an electrical socket. When I was older, I also got zapped plugging in the vacuum cleaner.

As a teenager, I refused to sweep the floors. Absolutely refused. In high school, I got a job as a kennel assistant, where I had to sweep and mop. I volunteer to clean cat cages for an animal rescue one day a week, and I also sweep when I am done.

I have never used illegal drugs. And I have never smoked a cigarette. I can count on one hand the number of times I have thrown up from too much drinking. I never had a fake ID or drank in public before I was 21. (Yes, I did drink at a party when I was 20 ... and ended up kissing my roommate's boyfriend, but that's another story ...)

I have never interviewed for a job and not gotten an offer. This is a blessing and a curse. I have never been rejected. But I also don't have much interview experience. I applied to one paper after college (and I didn't particularly want the job, but my adviser threatened that I better start interviewing). I interviewed, was offered the job and accepted. I loved the job but hated the town (this was the job where I met my husband, by the way). I turned down a promotion to accept a job back in my hometown, in a larger metro area. I sometimes wonder how things would have turned out differently if I had stayed and taken the promotion ... I quit that second job when I started dreading going in because of the person who got promoted to copy chief. I put a resume online and got three calls within a day. Two were from out-of-town papers, but one was from a local weekly. ... I was stunned and took my resume offline. I did, however, accept an interview with the local paper. I met the editor and managing editor over lunch. I thought the interview went OK but not great. I was called for a second interview and met the publisher. Little did I know that this interview was more formality than anything, as they offered me the job at the end of that interview. I was really shocked then. The editor, being relatively new to his position, expected an answer on the spot. The ME intervened, and I had at least until the next day to make a decision. The money was better ... and it was closer to the kind of work I wanted to do ... but it was an unknown. I took the job (and I'm still there, six years later).

I was born seven weeks early.

As a child, I was on a toboggan headed straight for a tree. Why I didn't jump off, I don't know. I hit the tree head-on, and I remember thinking, "I better not break my teeth. My parents have spent thousands at the orthodontist." I tilted my face up and hit the tree with my chin. I still have a scar.

When I was about 8, I had a tree house. My dad left my 6-year-old sister, my 3-year-old brother and me up there while he watched from the yard. I remember peering over the edge and feeling small hands on my back. The next thing I remember is my dad holding me over the sink and blood was everywhere. Miraculously, nothing was broken. I had a bloody nose and a few scratches. (My dad, quite possibly, may still be in trouble for this incident to this day.)

My sister, brother and I were into dangerous games and pain endurance. When I was in about fifth grade, we had a game that involved climbing a stepladder, jumping from the ladder to the bed and jumping off the bed -- blindfolded. It was great -- right until the time I landed on a dollhouse and got a black eye. I'm not sure my parents ever figured out exactly what happened. We cleaned the room up fast before they ran upstairs.

We also would jump down the stairs from the top to the landing. And we'd wrap ourselves in blankets and sleeping bags and roll down the stairs.

We ruined by brother's mattress playing a game called Sandwich. One person would lie on the box springs under the mattress while the other two jumped around on the mattress.

We also had a car game called Head Cruncher. One person would put his or her head behind the back of the second person. The second person would lean back as hard as he/she could. The third person was timekeeper. Whoever lasted the longest won. It was a great car game, especially when one person would ask to play Head Cruncher and then the second person would lean over to play, prompting the first person to shout, "Mom! She's on my side! She's touching me!" which would prompt my dad to start muttering various threats.

I also once poured water over a hot light bulb when I was about 9. I started out by dripping water on it and listening to the hisssssss. I thought that if I poured a lot of water on it, I would get an even louder hiss. I was wrong. The bulb shattered. My little brother, who was about 4, was in my room at the time. I went downstairs and told my parents that my lamp broke "for no reason." They asked my brother what happened, and all he would say was, "Water pouring. Water pouring." My parents never told me until much later that they knew what had happened all along. I thought I had gotten away with it.

We had some quieter childhood games, too, but they also were slightly morbid. My sister and I had twin beds and a LOT of stuffed animals. We would gather them all up on the bed and pretend we were on a raft. But not just any raft, a raft floating in a sea of blood and alligators. If any animals fell off, they needed special "medicine" from being in the poison blood/water.

I have never had to go to the Emergency Room. (Neither has my sister. My brother has twice. None of us has ever broken a bone.)

My sister and I dared each other to write on our walls in ballpoint pen. She made a stray line behind her door that she could claim as accidental. I drew a bull's-eye on the wall by my bed. I got in trouble. She didn't.

Now is it any wonder after all this why I don't have kids? My mom stayed home with us, and there was always an adult around, but we still managed to get into a lot of trouble doing dangerous and destructive things. But I guess that's always the case with kids ... My cousin's wife is a stay-at-home mom, and they have a nanny, too. Their kids still managed to push a Fisher Price play stove down a stairway, rip a door off its hinges by swinging on it and climb out a basement window.

My original college major was elementary education.

We took a family vacation every year, so I've gotten to see a lot of the country.

The only time I have been out of the country is to Tijuana, Mexico, briefly over the Canadian border at Niagara Falls and to the Caribbean on my honeymoon. I want to go to Europe someday.

I once had an asthma attack so bad in college that I probably should have gone to the emergency room, but I didn't. Instead, I called my boyfriend, who was four hours away; my ex-boyfriend, who wanted to take me to the hospital, but I wouldn't go; and my mom, who said, "I'm not there. I don't know how sick you are." At the urging of my ex-boyfriend, I did call the hospital to ask advice, and, of course, they told me to come in, but I still didn't. Instead, I sat up all night without sleeping because I couldn't breathe and cried. In the morning, my roommate took me to the college health center. I wasn't close to her, but that was a sweet thing she did. She stayed and waited with me to see the doctor even though she was cutting it close to missing her class. I didn't have to wait long to see the doctor. By this time, I could barely speak, and they didn't make me try. I wrote things down and pointed. The chief of staff was the doctor who saw me, and he gave me a lecture about not ever, ever, ever waiting that long to go to a doctor again. The next semester a girl I knew who worked on the school paper died from an asthma attack. My professor was shocked (and a little mad) when I confessed that I didn't go to the doctor when I had an attack either. I learned my lesson, but I've never had a bad attack since then.

I almost got kicked out of a college math class. For whatever reason, I decided not to try to test out of College Algebra, and the class turned out to be exactly like my math class from high school. I never paid attention. I wasn't disruptive; I was just spacey, looking out the window and such. The last straw for the teacher was the day I nodded absently to myself, and the class took that as an answer to the yes-or-no question the teacher was asking about a math problem (they knew I had one of the best grades in class). (The answer was no.) The teacher encouraged me to take a harder math class, but not in a positive way. I stayed in the class but was careful from then on to at least pretend to be learning.

I have never seen a funnel cloud or tornado in person, despite living all my life in Kansas.

I'm scarily good at writing online personals descriptions.

One of my favorite books is still "Charlotte's Web." I also like "A Prayer for Owen Meany." I remember liking "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," but it has been so long that I can't remember what it's about.

And that's all I have for now. Now, I must go to my dreaded new desk and get stuff done, get it done the best I can, and then let it go.

Cheers.