So I was tagged bypatesden for the 7 things meme and since I didn’t post a Friday five I thought I’d try. But mostly I feel boring. Sigh. Really, really boring. Okay, except for the stuff that I’m not willing to post in a public forum. 🙂 I can’t even come up with 5 things about me let alone 7. Plus every time I think of something I think everyone already knows that about me. So at the risk of repeating myself, here goes.

1. I don’t like my food touching on the plate. Well, any food that has juice in it. The worst used to be Sunday nights when I was a kid because it was roast beef, mashed potatoes and green beans. I loved the roast beef juice on the roast beef and hated that the mashed potatoes soaked a bunch of it up. I hated, I mean HATED the green bean juice that would run into the mashed potatoes and the beef. Gag. So while my grandmother was dishing up the plate (never even trying to limit the amount of bean juice I was going to have to deal with) I was taking paper napkins and rolling them into wedges that I could quickly put on my plate to sop up the juice.

2. I can’t drive a stick shift. Now if you’re a 20 or 30 something reading this it is probably not a big deal but I’m 50 years old and when I started to drive there were just as many stick shifts around, maybe more, than automatics. Three guys have tried to teach me and failed. I’m sure my ability to burst into tears at every rebuke had something to do with it.

3. My first boyfriend was the one who told me it was time to shave my legs. Very embarrassing. I was at the skating rink (I spent much of my middle grade/high school years roller skating competitively) and the skating dresses were really short. I mean REALLY short. If I wore nylons you couldn’t tell but in the summer time it was too hot. He was sitting next to me, put his hand on my knee, looked down at my legs and said, "You know, most girls your age are shaving their legs. Don’t you think you should start?" Argh!

4. This is pretty public knowledge if you have read HUGGING THE ROCK, or rather the author bio on the book, but I’ve never met my dad or anyone from his side of the family. Ever.

5.  For many years (from late teens til mid 30s) I was plagued with a variety of fears. I was borderline agoraphobic — I could leave the house but if I went more than about a half an hour from home I would get sick. In my 20’s I was so afraid to be home alone when my husband went hunting that I would sleep in the recliner facing the front door with one of his guns on my lap. Why I thought the bad guys would come through the front door, I had no idea. And when I left California to move cross-country many of my friends thought the stress of such a huge change would kill me. Instead, after a whole lot of crap, it made me stronger.

6. I have a thing for odd numbers which is sometimes problematic since my husband has a thing for even numbers. I can never remember his cell phone number because it is even and vice versa. Our house address has two of each, a grateful compromise.

7. I have a home library that now numbers about 8,000 books. Lucky me. 🙂