Making Progress....

I am making some progress on my Funeral piece and am very pleased with it. It's turning out to be much longer than I anticipated, but that's okay. I'm still not quite ready to post it, so I need some filler here. I am going to do something I swore I'd never do, but desperate times call for desperate measures. In my writing, I reveal many of my deepest feelings, but I don't reveal much about who I am in everyday life. So, here are 20 interesting things about me.

1. I shaved half my head in highschool during a pseudo-punk phase.

2. I flunked my senior year of highschool because I blew off all of my classes except Art, French, and Creative Writing. I was missing so many credits I had to repeat an entire year, during which I made straight A's.

3. When I left home at 18, I had only $100 in my pocket. Then I thought myself very adventurous. It strikes me now as incredibly foolhardy. I was lucky that my boyfriend's parents were willing to let me squat at their place until I was on my feet.

4. I have double jointed elbows. It freaks people out.

5. I was once a size 0 and my Dad thought I had an eating disorder. I didn't, which is now painfully apparent.

6. When I was 15, I got a job working in a pizza parlor which catered to the after bar crowd. The owner had to let me go because he got fined for having a minor serving beer.

7. My parents owned a (different) pizza place when I was in highschool.

8. I witnessed the very first MTV Broadcast. Who can name the very first video they played? Never mind...Google has taken all the fun out of trivia.

9. People say I look like Drew Barrymore. Snort.

10. I grew up in the same town as Harry Houdini.

11. I used to run an internet message board site that had over 7,000 members, almost all of which, were women. Yeah.

12. My wedding day was one of the biggest disasters EVER. It's a very long story, but one thing that happened was that the seamstress delivered the wrong dress to the church, and then promptly left the country for Bolivia, with my dress locked in her house. I had to wear a store demo to walk down the aisle.

13. Because of a very sporadic menstrual cycle, I didn't realize that I was pregnant with my first child until I was 10 weeks pregnant. He was born six weeks early, which means I was only conscious of being pregnant for about five months.

14. With my second child, I was 9 weeks pregnant when I found out. I had suffered an early miscarriage only 12 weeks prior to that. There was some speculation that I might have been pregnant with twins the first time, but it was never proven conclusively. My son was born on the second due date, but was 9lbs 3 oz and showed signs of being significantly post-term.

15. I lost 40 pounds in two days with my second child due to pre-eclampsia.

16. I quit smoking cold turkey 9 years ago. I was pregnant. Pregnancy hormones plus nictone withdrawal equals one beleagured husband.

17. I used to speak fluent French. I haven't used it since my honeymoon in Paris 13 years ago, and can now barely manage to ask for the bathroom.

18. I am naturally brunette, but have been dying my hair red for over 20 years. My kids have never seen me with anything but red hair. I have very fair, freckled skin and green eyes, and people are often surprised to find that I am not a natural redhead.

19. I am not what is known as a "morning person". Given a chance, I would stay up until the wee hours of the morning and sleep until noon.

20. 25 years ago, I chose a pen name to use when I became a famous author, because my maiden name was really embarassing. I still think it's cool.

So there you go. I know it's inane, but it's been three days since my last post and I'm feeling a little blog anxiety, which I used to think was beyond ridiculous.

Shrug.