
So I’ve been tagged by Abby at Blogging Hallie, one of the moms of the amazing Hallie, who was born at 23.5 weeks on the same day Henry was born. Abby tagged me with the Crazy Eights Meme, which is like those cool lists my friend Melissa is so good at answering. I wish Melissa were here to write this one for me, because who knew how hard it is to talk about yourself. Oh, except on the pages of the website you have VOLUNTARILY PUBLISHED ABOUT YOURSELF (and kids.) Well, anyway.
I have to post these rules before I give you the skinny: Each player starts with eight random facts or habits about themselves. People who are tagged are now obliged to write an entry telling us eight things about themselves and post these rules. At the end of your blog entry, tag eight new, unsuspecting bloggers to get tagged and list their names. (Oh, and leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged JUST IN CASE they missed that day on your blog.)
Okay, got all that? Well then, in the immortal words of Simon Cowell, off we go.
1. If I didn’t do what I do now, I would like to be the successful owner of one of those amazing ice cream stands you find way out in the country with a line 100 people deep even though it is in the middle of nowhere. I would have farm animals for the kids, beautiful gardens with benches in shady places, I would sell gorgeous hanging plants and incredible ice cream, and people would travel for miles to get a cone there.
2. I find cleaning out the fridge very cathartic. In fact, I would even go out on a limb and say I enjoy it.
3. I once offered to write a check at a toll booth, because I didn’t have the toll fee. (It was an unexpected toll at the end of a long trip, give me a break.)
4. I was an extra in the Steven Spielberg film, Amistad. Wait, it gets better: I played a New Haven Prostitute, and had to wear a low-cut (for the 1800s) dress. It was a cold day, and while all the other female extras could wear layers underneath, I couldn’t, since the neckline would reveal my non-historic undergarments. Then the production team decided I had been seen on camera too much and they changed my costume to Southern Belle—a very high neck, and I added lots of layers underneath—heaven. Morgan Freeman? Very much of the people, talked to us “background artists” between scenes and was extremely pleasant. Matthew McConaughey? Not so much. He walked around muttering his lines while looking at the ground, and didn’t speak to anyone but his assistant. Even when I was in the hair and makeup chair NEXT TO HIM getting my ho-doo (prostitute hairdo.) Oh, and Steven Spielberg touched my shoulder when he was arranging us extras for a scene. And YOU ACTUALLY KNOW ME.
5. I have been in presidential candidate Gov. Bill Richardson‘s apartment in the Waldorf-Astoria, when he was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. I’ve also been alone in a room with him when he was Energy Secretary in the Clinton Administration. (I know just what is going through your dirty minds, and honestly! What’s wrong with you people? I was WORKING, I was in PR, these were at events or preparing for media interviews! Sheesh!)
6. Between 1994 and 2004 I attended what I think was 42 weddings. Good thing I love weddings.
7. I see absolutely nothing wrong with mixing a few chocolate chips with a spoonful of peanut butter and eating said concoction.
8. I was a biology major in college, and I worked in a cancer research lab at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York before joining the madcap world of communications. Among my responsibilities included injecting the prostate glands of live mice, which is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. And yet, I could never deal with a dead mouse in a trap, and some years back, when I was living two states away from my future husband, I called him from my perch high on a chair, after seeing a mouse scurry across the floor of my apartment. It’s all in the context, folks.
Okay, enough about me! I would like any reader of mine to consider themselves tagged, and if you don’t have a blog, leave your juicy facts in the comments.
But since I actually have to tag some real live bloggers, too, I tag the following unsuspecting people:
Mike, who is completely big time, because he is getting tagged with a meme AND has been a guest blogger all in one week (plus he irons! Too bad he’s taken, ladies!);
Jess, who is planning a wedding and doesn’t have time for this nonsense, but has to do it! Because I tagged her!
Molly, who can NO DOUBT give us eight seriously crazy facts about her trip to Vegas when she gets back;
Christine, who is a brand new blogger, and if you had a trip like this, you’d write about it, too;
Rush, who can tell eight great stories off the top of his head, and I hope one of them will be about Car Talk;
Stacy, who just might share her secrets to those gorgeous photographs and Maile, who also might talk about her gorgeous photographs or perhaps her most creative pedicure, which I love;
and finally, Jessica, who is way too busy to do this, plus she is a FAMOUS and ESTABLISHED blogger, so I think this might be breaking some kind of blogging social climbing rule, but while she may be famous, she is so down-to-earth that she has emailed with me MORE THAN ONCE, so just maybe.
And there you have it.