Seven Random Things About Me

You like me, you really, really like me!

Or at least MommyTime at Mommy's Martini does. She just tagged me on my first ever meme, and I'm so excited I have of course dropped EVERYTHING to post. This means that the slim chance I had of ending this day less behind than I started is now over, and dinner will be late, and when the contractor shows up tomorrow morning just as I'm leaving for work to find out where I want the electric sockets on our new screen porch (a story for another time), I won't know, because I will have been writing instead of measuring stuff, and I'll just say "there" and "umm, there," and in mid-July, when I can't get the lamp close enough to my book because the electric socket is on the wrong wall, I'll kick myself for not being more disciplined, and spend a lot of time on the Internet trying to find an invisible extension cord.

But anyway, the deal is this: I'm supposed to post seven weird or random things about me, and then tag seven people to do the same thing. But MommyTime only tagged four people, and I'm so grateful to her for actually being a reader that I'm now totally enthralled by everything she does, like she's in seventh grade and has actually spoken to little old me, a lowly fourth grader, in front of the entire playground, and so if she did four, then four it is. So here goes.

1. I do not like raw tomatoes. I know this because, as a mature 48-year-old who's trying to set a good example for her very picky 14-year-old, I still try them every summer, and they still taste just as awful. I have never tasted embalming fluid, but for some reason I have always imagined it tastes just like raw tomatoes. If you don't think this is a significant social limitation, you obviously do not live in the South. People down here are serious about their tomatoes. "You're kidding," they say. "Come on -- there's nothing better." My grandmother in particular really seemed to think there was something wrong about me. It's kind of like being on Joe McCarthy's blacklist, only different.

2. I once woke up at 2 a.m. with a burglar standing at the foot of my bed shining a huge flashlight on me. Yes, this was scary, but only after the fact. At the time, what it was was INFURIATING. I've never been so pissed in my life. This is SUCH a long story, it will have to be my post tomorrow. If you're intrigued, check back.

3. I am more repulsed by the technical terms for body parts than the gutter words. Not that I'm crazy about those. I prefer pointing.

4. Remember Gary Hart, who had to drop out of the 1984 Democratic presidential campaign because he went sailing on a boat called Risky Business with a young blonde woman not his wife? (If you weren't born back then, you just got a history lesson.) When that happened, it came out that Gary Hart had long been screwing anything and everything in a skirt. Well back in 1983, when I was a newspaper reporter, I interviewed Gary Hart in the coffee shop of a motel where he was staying during a campaign swing through our city. There was not another soul in the coffee shop. Yet the only thing Gary Hart talked about with me were his theories about government. (Maybe it had something to do with #3.) I must admit when all the stories came out a year later, I was insulted. I thought maybe I should print up a T-shirt that said "I interviewed Gary Hart, and all I got was this lousy newspaper story," but then I realized I would be my only customer.

5. I am the only right-hander in the Bird household. I am the only Bird who is bad at math. I am also the only Bird who is not an incredible singer. Coincidence? I think not.

6. I met Bob, my husband, in 1985 when I interviewed at his law firm, but he doesn't remember it. When I went to work there in 1986, he and I went to lunch the second day and became fast friends. When we went home to our respective families over Thanksgiving, we rode together, still just as friends. Hearing me talk about him during that visit, both my mother and my sister wrote on slips of paper their predictions that we would be engaged by the next Thanksgiving. The really weird thing is that (a) neither of them had ever been an underwear-drawer-prediction-hider, and (b) neither of them knew that the other had done it. Less than a month later, we were dating, and the following Labor Day, we got engaged.

7. Having dry sand or dusty dirt on my feet makes my skin crawl. If you ever suspect me of being a terrorist, make me walk barefoot across a dirty grocery store floor and then force me to eat a bunch of raw tomatoes. I'll tell you anything you want to hear.

So there you have it -- not the most bizarre person you've ever met. On the other hand, maybe not quite so plain vanilla as my friend Jane's friend, whom she refers to as "Boring Katie."

***** Here are the rules and my tags. *****
This is the “7 Things” meme, and here are the rules:

Link your tagger. Post the rules.
Share 7 facts about yourself (random or weird)
Tag 7 friends
Leave a comment letting them know they have been tagged.

As for who I'm tagging, I'm a relatively new kid on the block, bloggily speaking, and half the people I read regularly would say "Betsy Who? Emptying What?" if I tagged them. But hopefully at least one or two of these fine ladies will play along.
They are (drumroll, please):
1. June Cleaver Nirvana.
2. Just Chicken Feed.
3. Thursday Drive.
4. Whiskey In My Sippy Cup.

Don't worry about how behind you are! Go read them!