Eight Things You Never Asked To Know

All In The Family... Blogs and Blogging...

A meme is going around some of the blogs I frequent. I enjoyed reading Greenman Tim's responses to it. Then I read the last paragraph and realized he had tagged me. So here are eight random things about myself.

1. I think I would enjoy video games but I've never allowed myself to get started playing them. I'm afraid I would want to play night and day.

2. Speaking of night, I'm quite a nightowl. I would do well at a night job.

3. I am terribly near-sighted. I'm thankful that I was born in the age of modern optometry. I started wearing glasses when I was in second grade. When I was 20, I got contact lenses and I wore them for nearly 30 years. Then I caught pinkeye (a really disgusting condition!) and I had to wear glasses while I was getting over it. I haven't gone back to contacts since, though I think about it sometimes.

4. When my sister and I were little, we sometimes rolled our chewed bubble gum in the sugar bowl to refresh it.

5. I hate pantyhose. Here is how I avoid wearing them. When I have to "dress up" for church or whatever, I wear black slacks and a coordinating top. I have eight pairs of black slacks, in several different fabrics. In summer, I add a few pairs of beige slacks to the mix. Once in a while, I might wear a summer dress with sandals.

6. I was a "Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year" when I was a senior in high school. A few years later, I was a "Miss Nebraska Charolais." Another girl was the "Miss Nebraska Charolais." I was just the runner-up. I think those are the only two titles I've ever won. I won a local photography contest once, and I won a floral arrangement once in a drawing. I've never been particularly lucky at winning things.

7. I taught elementary school for eight years before I had kids, and spent another year teaching Basic Math to soldiers in Germany before Isaac was born. I should have gone back to teaching when we came to Kentucky, but the schools were in an uproar because of the new Kentucky Education Reform Act. I was a stay-at-home mom for a while, then worked at a couple of other jobs. Now my kids are grown. I wonder if I still have the energy for the students, the papers that have to be graded, the classes they'd want me to take, and all those cranky co-teachers. People my age retire from teaching, not return to it. Nonetheless, I will probably substitute teach this fall.

8. When we lived in Bolivia, I played cribbage fiercely with a group of intense cribbage players. Then life went on, and I had no cribbage-playing cronies. When Keely was eight, I taught her to play. Now every time we play, she beats me! (She's also much faster and better at Sudoku than me!)

The next step of the meme is that I'm supposed to invite eight more bloggers to carry on the meme. If this meme interests you, please consider yourself tagged. If you send me the link to your eight things, I'll post it here.

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