Five Things No One Knows About Me

I took this photo at the wonderful Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary in South Dakota last summer. Selected it today because it reflects my skittishness with the topic. I started this blog to write about things that I want to write about, in some bigger format. I don't actually like to write about myself.

But I was reading Wendy Hoke's Creative Ink blog to catch up on what the priest is saying at her weekly RCIA classes (always very interesting) and found that she had tagged me for a meme on this topic. I haven't quite figured out what all this blog language means or what to do with it, but here goes:

1. I am suffering today from a mirth injury. Instead of doing whatever I usually do after dinner, I sat down in the living room and watched Jon Stewart and then Steven Colbert a few nights ago. They're always funny, but they were either exceptionally funny that night or I was really primed to laugh. I laughed so much that my throat is still sore. I suspect my mirth muscles need a more regular workout.

2. About fifteen years ago, I was going to a movie with some friends and there was one of those huge cardboard cutouts of Christian Slater inside the theater lobby-- and he looked just like me! Really, it was like standing in front of a fun-house mirror, only one that changes your gender and age instead of giving you a huge butt. My friends agreed that Christian Slater and I looked as if we had been separated at birth. I still feel a sort of odd kinship with him. He probably does, too.

3. Even though I like the kind of long hot showers that elicit shock from my family in droughty California, I am fine going for days without bath or shower. I bathe quite regularly here in Cleveland--although my son asks if he sees me early in the day, since he's disturbed that I sometimes go without--but when I was in Kabul, it was often too much trouble to take a shower. There either wasn't enough hot water, or, if there was, the bathroom was too smokey from the woodstove. Or maybe I just didn't feel like walking all the way over to the building with the shower. It seemed like too much trouble to bathe in Afghanistan. I often feel that way about camping, too.

4. I seem to have an unconcious belief in reincarnation. When I drive down my street in the summer and see the women and their strollers congregate at the corner, on their way to the park, I catch myself thinking, "Next time I'm a young mother..." When I see the kids walking home from high school, I catch myself thinking, "When I'm fifteen again..." And sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror--disparagingly--I'll catch myself thinking, "Okay, I'm going to stop being middle aged"-- much as I often think, "Okay, I'm never going to eat ice cream again." As if getting older were a poorly thought-out decision I had made or the result of a decision I had failed to make-- something that I could now plot out on a goal sheet and change. [I guess this last thing doesn't reflect a belief in reincarnation--more a belief in some advanced power to manipulate time which I've failed to employ]

5. One of the things other freelancer writers often say is that they love their job because they don't have to get dressed up. But this is one of the things I hate about freelancing-- no impetus to wear anything other than pajamas. I worked in an office ten years ago, and I loved dressing up for it. Loved the shoes with the little heels and the suits and even the pantyhose. I often came into work with wet hair--and I never managed the art of makeup-- but I did have cool clothes. Shortly after I left that job, I spent one morning interviewing a congressman by phone, in my nightgown. I enjoyed the mismatch between the way I looked and the image he probably had of me, but still--I think wistfully of my downtown clothes.   ¶ 12:04 PM