Leah tagged me on Face­book to write 25 ran­dom things about myself, then Sam tagged me to come up with 16 ran­dom tid­bits. I’m not good at these things, but I’ll give it a try.

1. I did­n’t go to kinder­garten, but start­ed first grade when I was 5 because my moth­er thought she had to put me in school.
2. My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Forester, was very hard of hear­ing, so she yelled con­stant­ly. I was con­stant­ly pet­ri­fied that year, because in my fam­i­ly yelling meant some­body was going to get knocked around.
3. I spent much of the 4th and 5th grades as a sub­sti­tute teacher for younger stu­dents, because one of my aunts was the school sec­re­tary and she chose well-behaved A stu­dents (always female, for some rea­son) for that pur­pose. The school or school dis­trict was appar­ent­ly too poor or too cheap to actu­al­ly hire subs.
4. My ear­li­est mem­o­ry is from the week after my sis­ter was born, when I was 23 months old.
5. When my sis­ter and I were about 2 and 4 years old, a rabid Ger­man shep­herd jumped the fence around our back yard and chased us. It was less than a foot away from her when a neigh­bor used his hunt­ing rifle to kill it. She does­n’t remem­ber the inci­dent, but she’s still pho­bic about that breed. Me? I want­ed to learn to shoot that rifle. NOW!
6. I start­ed ques­tion­ing Chris­tian­i­ty when I was about 8 years old. One of my cousins gave me a lit­tle Scor­pio pen­dant for my birth­day, which my moth­er prompt­ly con­fis­cat­ed, rail­ing about for­tune-telling and witch­es. I asked her about the dif­fer­ence between “prophets” and “for­tune-tellers” and found myself in the preacher’s office. I asked him about a spe­cif­ic verse in the New Tes­ta­ment and was told that God had­n’t giv­en him the under­stand­ing of that verse yet, so he ripped that page out of his Bible. Since Moth­er spanked us for even putting a Sun­day School book or church bul­letin on top of a Bible while car­ry­ing them, I was con­vinced that he was going to Hell straightaway—unless the whole church thing was balder­dash.
7. My first piano teacher, Mar­jorie Hall, had also taught my moth­er when she was a child. She was our church organ­ist.
8. My father has had seri­ous back prob­lems through­out most of my life. I learned to give back rubs very ear­ly, try­ing to ease his pain.
9. My mater­nal grand­fa­ther, Dad­dy Boots, was a moon­shine run­ner in his younger years. Some of Dad­dy’s extend­ed fam­i­ly ran stills across north Alaba­ma and north Geor­gia, and it’s very like­ly that he worked for them. I’ve always found that high­ly amus­ing, since Mom’s fam­i­ly con­sid­ered Dad­dy to be “from the wrong side of the tracks” when they start­ed dat­ing.
10. Our extend­ed fam­i­lies were very close­ly-knit when I was young, but both fell apart fair­ly quick­ly after my grand­moth­ers died (both in 1987).
11. My pater­nal grand­fa­ther was a union orga­niz­er at the steel mill where he worked. He died when my father was 7, and the union did noth­ing to help the fam­i­ly, so Dad­dy has been vir­u­lent­ly anti-union ever since.
12. I came across the idea of being open­ly involved with more than one per­son at a time in Hein­lein’s Time Enough for Love when I was 13. It made per­fect sense to me. I’ve been polyamorous ever since, though I have agreed to monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships from time to time.
13. I adore huge dogs. Yes, in the house. It’s cru­el to bring a dog into a fam­i­ly, then keep it out in the yard. They’re pack ori­ent­ed! I miss hav­ing a big, fenced yard that’s suit­ed to let­ting a big dog run around safe­ly.
14. I’ve always been a cat per­son, which is weird, since my par­ents have no use for them. They don’t think ani­mals belong in the house at all, but over the years I guess I wore them down. I hard­ly con­sid­er any struc­ture a home with­out a cat.
15. I miss climb­ing trees. I don’t think any­one taught me to do it, but accord­ing to both my mem­o­ries and fam­i­ly sto­ries, if they could­n’t find me, the best place to look was gen­er­al­ly up. I used to spend hours perched up in trees, read­ing, as the best way to avoid my lit­tle sis­ter.
16. I spent much of my mid­dle school and ear­ly high school evenings and week­ends babysit­ting and act­ing as a “moth­er’s helper.” I even babysat a cou­ple of kids who were old­er than I was, but since I was ahead of them in school, that was a secret between me and their par­ents.
17. I start­ed work­ing at my father’s employ­er’s office after school and in the sum­mers when I was 12.
18. I was involved in just about every­thing but art and sports in high school: march­ing and sym­phon­ic band, per­form­ing cho­rus, dra­ma, debate, math club, Beta club, Nation­al Hon­or Soci­ety, Junior Civ­i­tan, Close-Up, mod­el U.N., etc. I had no idea that any of it would mat­ter to colleges—that was just a nice bonus.
19. While hus­band v.2 was wor­ried about his draft num­ber, I was start­ing first grade. Hus­band v.3 had already served in Viet­nam and returned by then.
20. Katie real­ly is a mir­a­cle, God­dess-gift baby. I met a woman at a Men­sa nation­al gath­er­ing, and out of the blue she asked if she could per­form a heal­ing for me. I could­n’t find a polite way to say no, so I said yes. She spent sev­er­al hours “pour­ing ener­gy” into me. After­wards, I could­n’t find her, the room where we’d been, or any­one else who had noticed her. Not long after that, I was preg­nant with­out any fer­til­i­ty treat­ments, although mul­ti­ple doc­tors had insist­ed that there was no way I would ever con­ceive with­out them.
21. I learned that I was preg­nant less than a week after con­cep­tion, because of the 24/7 sick­ness (that stayed with me through­out the preg­nan­cy). I thought I had a stom­ach flu, but it would­n’t go away. I went to a doc-in-the-box to get a preg­nan­cy test just to make my hus­band stop talk­ing about a preg­nan­cy. I made them do the test three times to be sure!
22. I’ve lost track of the num­ber of mis­car­riages I’ve had. I want­ed more kids, but have final­ly resigned myself to the fact that I got a per­fect child the first time, and she’s going to be my only one.
23. I’m a vocal snob. I find it phys­i­cal­ly painful to be near some peo­ple when they’re singing, and have lit­tle to no patience with them. While I’d love to sing with a group again on a reg­u­lar basis, I’m total­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed in any group that does­n’t require strict audi­tions.
24. I think I’ve for­got­ten how to cook. Odd, since I start­ed cook­ing at a very young age and cooked din­ner every day until short­ly before I met Sam. (He’s a bet­ter cook than I am, any­way.)
25. I’m not cur­rent­ly read­ing a book. I can’t remem­ber that hav­ing hap­pened at any time since I was in first grade.

I’m not going to tag peo­ple specif­i­cal­ly, but if you want to play, please let me know so that I won’t miss your list!

Your result for Rein­car­na­tion Place­ment Exam…

Gypsy Camp

59% Intrigue, 44% Civ­i­liza­tion, 66% Human­i­ty, 59% Crowd­ed, 33% Busy.

Take Rein­car­na­tion Place­ment Exam at HelloQuizzy

Then again, it could be that I’m a south­ern­er who grew up in the metro Atlanta area, where we hear all kinds of accents. Or that I watched too much tele­vi­sion as a child, and broad­cast­ers use the same stan­dard. In any case, the author of the quiz seems to be a bit out of touch as far as the expla­na­tions of dif­fer­ent results go (and a bit defen­sive, as well).

Swiped from and :
Go over to Wikipedia and enter your birth­date and then pick 3 events, 2 births and 1 hol­i­day that occurred on the day of your birth­day.

Okay–my birth­day is Novem­ber 12, 1966. Odd­ly enough, I could­n’t find any­thing that hap­pened on my actu­al date of birth. There were plen­ty of things that hap­pened on Novem­ber 12 of oth­er years. I tried to pick rel­a­tive­ly upbeat events.

Events:

• 1847 — Sir James Young Simp­son, a British physi­cian, is the first to use chlo­ro­form as an anaes­thet­ic.
• 1981 — The Space Shut­tle Colum­bia becomes the first space­craft to be launched twice.
• 1990 — Tim Bern­ers-Lee pub­lish­es a for­mal pro­pos­al for the World Wide Web.

Births:

• 1929 — Princess Grace of Mona­co, Amer­i­can Actress, Roy­al­ty
• 1962 — Nao­mi Wolf, Amer­i­can author and fem­i­nist

Death:

• 1916 — Per­ci­val Low­ell, Amer­i­can ama­teur astronomer, founder of Low­ell Obser­va­to­ry in Flagstaff, Ari­zona (b. 1855)

What’s your num­ber?

Mine is 684, so I’m not a Webri­ty.

Lil­lian, anoth­er Blog365 par­tic­i­pant, tagged me for this meme. I don’t think I’ve ever been tagged for any­thing before!

Here are the rules:

1. Write the title to your own mem­oir using exact­ly six words.
2. Post it on your blog.
3. Link to the per­son who tagged you.
4. Tag five oth­er blog­gers.

The first thing that comes to mind is “Yes, I’d Do It All Again.” How else would I be sure of hav­ing Sam and Katie?

I’m sup­posed to tag five peo­ple, too, but I’ve nev­er tagged any­body. How about you just do it if you feel like it?

From and :

You know how some­times peo­ple on your friend’s list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sud­den you think “Wait a minute? Since when are they work­ing THERE? Since when are they dat­ing HIM/HER? since when???” And then you won­der how you could have missed all that seem­ing­ly pret­ty stan­dard infor­ma­tion, but some­how you feel too ashamed to ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tion because it seems like info you *should* already know? It hap­pens to all of us some­times.

If you want to play, just copy mine below, erase my answers, put yours in their place and then post it in your jour­nal! Please elab­o­rate on the ques­tions that would ben­e­fit from elab­o­ra­tion! One-Word-Answers sel­dom help any­one out.

First Name: Cyn­thia or Cyn. Not Cindy.
Age: 41
Loca­tion: Decatur, GA
Occu­pa­tion: Stay-at-home mom, stu­dent
Partner(s): Sam
Kids: Katie (17) is the only one at home. Sam’s kids, Rowan (19) and Genevieve (16) used to live with us.
Pets: Kioshi, a two-year-old cat
School: I’m cur­rent­ly attend­ing online class­es at DeVry Uni­ver­si­ty, study­ing for a bach­e­lor’s degree in tech­nol­o­gy and man­age­ment with a con­cen­tra­tion in tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions.
Sib­lings: One sis­ter and one broth­er, both younger than me, mar­ried, with kids.
Par­ents: Alive and still mar­ried, they live one coun­ty away from us.
Health: Can I skip this part? No? Darn. Okay, I’m dis­abled due to a com­bi­na­tion of fibromyal­gia (FMS), spondy­loarthropa­thy, arthri­tis, chron­ic fatigue syn­drome (CFS), myofas­cial pain syn­drome (MPS), and migraines. I’m aller­gic to most of the nat­ur­al world, too.
List the 3 — 5 biggest things going on in your life:

1. Katie
2. Sam
3. Health stuff
4. School

Tak­en from

These are the 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-round­ed. Bold the ones you’ve read, under­line the ones you read for school, ital­i­cize the ones you start­ed but did­n’t fin­ish.

Utter insan­i­ty. All of it. My fall class­es just start­ed. I’m in a flare (when am I not? but seri­ous­ly, I am).

But hey! I hate my birth­day, and three insane new things for the month should, at least, be dis­tract­ing!

So, yes, this would be my sec­ond NaBloPo­Mo post. I’m hav­ing a lit­tle tech­ni­cal trou­ble actu­al­ly post­ing the NaPod­Po­Mo part, but I’m doing them. And fine, might as well top it off with NaNoW­riMo.

It’s Hope’s fault. And Sam’s. And, um, right. Kioshi’s. All of you. Dread­ful.

Don’t mind me. By the end of Novem­ber, at least, I won’t have any hair left, so I won’t be spend­ing any more time wor­ry­ing over whether or not to get it cut, or col­or it, or what­ev­er!