Facebook Meme Makes the Blog (or see #10)

The following was a Facebook meme that I worked so hard on cause I wanted mine to be as charming and illuminating as my friends Lisa and Carrie's were. I'm not sure mine lives up to that but I am nonetheless including it here.

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you and I am soo glad you have come into my life.(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

25. I have three tattoos but usually appear fairly cleancut a juxtiposition I personally enjoy. They're all very meaningful to me (even the boring one) and I hope to get more when I can afford to do so. And to those people who say "Well, what about when you're 80?" I say that's a buncha hooey. They become a part of you-I'm always happy to see them when I catch a glimpse but other than that they're just a part of me.

24. My favorite and lucky number is 18. I tend to the superstitious a bit-right now it's hawks. If I see a hawk on my way somewhere I always feel like it's a good omen. I also wish on stars. A lot.

23. Some people are cat people, some are dog people. I'm a menagerie person-if I see it, I want it. (See a yak, want a yak.) Hopefully, I'll have the space to do something about that some day.

22. As of a few weeks ago I am a shape note singer. At the end of our first finished song someone at my group said "You're a shape note singer now." I can sing 4 songs now so I'm really a shape note singer.

21. I am a music, movie and book person. If you don't like any or all of these enough to keep up with my near constant stream of Tourette's like references, well, we probably won't be friends. You don't have to like the same ones I do, I like it better when there's just some overlap, but I don't trust people who aren't into at least one of these. What do they do for fun? What do they think about?

20. One of my passions is, inexplicably, polar exploration-especially the travels of Sir Ernest Shackleton. I have a shrine to that man, a daily reminder about the power of endurance and passion. I look at it and it makes whatever I've got going seem minor and eminately do-able.

21. Things I'd save in a fire:-the cat (natch)-laptop-my birthday suitcase-mix tapes & CDs-photos

19. I'm single but am always brought up short when someone refers to me as 'unlucky in love'. Wha? I have loved and been loved by so many great men-one flew me to Chicago for the day so I could see a whale because I never had. That doesn't feel unlucky to me.

18. I am an extroverted introvert which means (I think) I'm shy but not so you'd notice. I think I have Situational Social Anxiety-I can give a presentation to a crowd with no problem but freeze up when I have to make a phone call to a stranger. I know, it's weird.

17. I have a bartender face. People just want to tell me things, deeply personal things I don't usually want to know. Not sure why that is exactly and if it's the reason I have always had a desire to bartend even though I'm absolutely sure that it's not a glamorous gig.

16. Words are everything to me. Lyrics, the back of a cereal box, my cell phone manual-I want to know them all. I especially love the personal vocabulary shorthand you develop with someone close. How I can just say 'Margaret' to certain friends and they know exactly what I mean.

15. One of the hardest things I have ever done was speak at my friend Scott's memorial service but I'm so glad I did. It would be one of my St. Peter arguements for sure. Another would be the fact that when my friend was admitted to the pysch hospital when we were kids I made sure she had mail every day for the month she was there which when you don't have a car and they don't deliver mail on Sundays is saying something.

14. I listen to the soundtrack to the novel Northline every day. It's that necessary and important to me.

13. Though I would not call myself an artist I love to dabble in all sorts of creative things. Papercrafts are my favorite since they are most forgiving to the untalented (plus the fact that paint chips are the best free art supplies ever) but I also enjoy photography. Right now I am building my first Cornell box as a gift for my friend George.

12. I have 3 automimmune diseases. Managing them is not always easy and I'll be the first to admit I'm not always the best patient but as it has been amply proven how good I can feel when I do buckle down, I am doing much better on that front. Dealing with my malfunctioning body has also given me a keen interest in medical matters-nothing I love better than a good medical story. I believe it will make me an excellent senoir citizen.

11. I love to shop at thrift stores. I always say anybody can take $200 and go to Barneys and come out with something cool, the real challenge is to take $20 to the Salvation Army and do the same.

10. Though I can work very hard I also have a huge lazy streak. I think that's why I get along with cats so well.

9. I have a really good memory which is good for a writer but can be bad in relationships. People really don't want you to remember every single thing they ever said. It kinda just pisses them off.

8. I rarely ever remember any of my dreams so when I do am compelled to relate them no matter how boring or mundane.

7. Like a lot of people I behaved very badly as a younger person and I feel like I'm trying to live in such a way now as to make up for it. I'm not sure that is actually ever possible but, like trying to be a good Christian, I believe am I better for the striving.

6. I have always been different, as long as I can remember. Like a disability, I believe I have learned to compensate for it so long as I do the extra mental translating. But, no matter how hard I try, several times a year at least I'll do something that throws other people for a loop. I often think that if science could just flip open my head that they would be shocked and declare me the highest functioning crazy person ever though I am aware that just the fact I think that means I'm probably not really crazy.

5. I would very much like to have a nude portrait taken, not for porn purposes (though I think "shape note singing" would make an awesome listed hobby on a porn site right next to "long walks on the beach"). No, just to capture my self in my body at this point in my life.

4. On one of my earliest report cards in the parent comment box my mother wrote "I hope Samantha will learn to live by the Golden Rule all her life". I think of that often. I also think of what my old friend David Patton told me once, "Better to regret something you've done than something you haven't". I think that's personally very true though I must admit I've used it as justification for doing something questionable on more than one occasion.

3. My immediate goals are finishing my book, finding a job that satisfies, a lover, a house and a dog. But not necessarily in that order.

2. I'm a crier. Movies, cards, even manipulative commercials get to me. You don't have to jerk the tears out of me, I'll give em to you in buckets. I'd love to be more stoic and tough but I don't see that happening. But what most people don't get is that that is just the first go to response. Crisis, I cry, then I do what needs to be done. Don't think I've gone to pieces or anything.

1. In high school my yearbook quote was going to be "happy is the man who can laugh at himself for he will never cease to be amused" but I changed it at the last minute for a Springsteen quote. If I had it to do over I would stick with my first choice.

(Sometimes) You Gotta Love People

The first time was on Valentine's Day. I was celebrating with my closest friend and her daughter at, of all places, the Golden Corral. And we weren't alone, it was packed. As we were getting our drinks and waiting to be seated my friend struck up a conversation with the man in front of us. (She does this, she and her daughter are SO the 'never met a stranger types'.) He was speaking of his wife, telling us they had been married, "14 years, two months and ten days. Never a cross word the whole time." As we were marveling and digesting that he said, more quietly this time, "Wouldn't trade her for every winning lottery ticket."

Say it with me, awww. Now, that's what Valentine's Day should sound like.

The second time was the other day at work. We had been having a discussion the previous shift about the worst song ever and I was making my case for Richard Harris' "Mac Arthur Park". A classic, perhaps stereotypical, choice I realize but... It's. So. Bad. (I still don't get exactly what the hell that song is getting at.)

Then that got me started on "Orca", my favorite bad movie ever, which also stars the inimitable Mr. Harris. I can't speak of that movie-the horrible overacting and scenery chewing, it's blatant attempt to cash in on "Jaws"-without getting all exhausted by paroxysms of laughter. So then when I went to let in my co-worker she was holding up an LP. It was "The Love Songs of Richard Harris" which she had found the afternoon after our conversation for 99 cents. I was delighted-it was the best, most thoughtful gift. It's horrible and wonderful at the same time.

Kinda like people.

Touch Me

"Touch is the oldest sense and the most urgent."
-Diane Ackerman

Touch has been on my mind a lot lately. As the previously drought stricken will marvel at new rain-something formerly prosaic that seems positively relevatory in its reappearance-I've been reveling in touching. The deep unadulterated pleasure of being touched. How all the cells in your body sing out in a verse that is both a clamor (more!) and a hallelujah (amen!). How the cells light up like newly juiced Christmas lights, on the here and there of you.

Seperate from anything X-rated, just the celebration of the simple pleasure of having license to hug someone whenever the feeling strikes. To punch them in the shoulder or butt them with your head as you're walking down the sidewalk. Don't tell me we're not animals, don't tell me that when, after a soul suckingly shitty day, all you want is a big enveloping hug so warm its cloaks you from all the world's cold.

As Mary Oliver writes:

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves."

And my soft animal loves to be touched.

Another Fabulous Friday Night

Now I have never been one of those women who won't leave the house without a face full of makeup, old school advice aside. I know, I'm single, I need to be constantly ready

(in a case it didn't read like it that was tongue in cheek there, folks)

but, like being well shod, it's just not going to happen.

I am so not that girl.

This fact came back to bite me Friday night though. Left planless and adrift for the weekend, I was attempting to amuse and cajole myself out of my 'waa waa' funk with some thrifting and running about town but it wasn't working. In fact, if I'd have been five I would have stamped my feet and whined that's how bad it was. But I stopped at the grocery in another end of town, food in the larder and one more thing crossed off the list being two more, albeit feeble attempts, to cheer myself, before hitting the Chinese takeout next door. (They have woks big enough to bathe in which is always good for a smile at least.)

Immediately upon walking in I spy someone in produce that I have wanted to meet since moving back home last fall. A friend of a friend and a quasi local celeb there he was, looking just like his picture. And there I was-pale, crabby and looking like ten kinds of crap.

Now it would take a certain kind of day for me for feel confident enough to march up to someone I don't know and say, "You don't know me from a wagon wheel but I'm Sam. We should be friends, and let me tell you why." And that day for sure wasn't the day. So instead I skulked around the store spying like some sort of low rent, less cute Veronica Mars. And left, feeling even grumpier than before.

My Car Told Me So It Must Be True

This musical message is brought to you by The Hold Steady.

A Wise Musical Interlude

Though he may be a David Byrne certified oddball and free spirit (I love that his resume includes both fashion model and pro surfer) I don't think anyone could quibble with the rock bottom, common sense wisdom of this, Jim White's "10 Miles to Go on a 9 Mile Road":

"there ain't no guarentees
none of that nonsense like on TV
you just gotta roll the dice
and take your lumps
you're gonna get yourself knocked down
so better learn to stand back up
those who dwell on diaster
let sorrow be their master"