Six Things About Me

Ewa has tagged me from her beautiful garden in Poland. Since I received this tag several months ago, I'll forgo tagging anyone else this time. But I don't mind listing six new, different random things about myself. (Last time it was ten, so six should be a piece of cake!)

The guidelines are as follows:
(I'll say guidelines, not rules. . . I don't like rules.)

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the guidelines on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post. (I won't be following this guideline.)
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. (or this one. . . )
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

The one thing anyone who's visited my blog or read my comments knows is that I tend to get a bit. . . ahem. . . wordy, shall we say? (If you don't believe me, ask my husband!) So what the heck, why should this post be any different?

1. My most serious injuries have occurred in the garden. They include almost severing part of my right middle finger with an electric hedge trimmer.
In my freshman year of high school I stepped on a pitchfork while working in our vegetable garden. One of the tines went between two toes and in pretty deeply. (I was barefoot.) I ended up with an abscess and missed the last week of school. I was teacher's pet in Earth Science, and my teacher, who was a hippie-type with long, flaming, curly red hair and a bushy red beard, gave me an A for my final exam grade even though I missed the final.

2. I used to have an awful phobia about blood, shots - pretty much any medical procedure involving needles, cutting, and/or blood. It started when I was little. Because I was kind of sickly as a small child, I had a lot of contact with doctors and unpleasant medical procedures. Eventually my fear developed into a full-blown phobia. Back when doctors made house calls, my doctor came to our house at least once a week, and I always got an injection. I'd try to run away when it was time for the shot. One time I locked myself in the bathroom. The doctor and my mom were on the other side of the door, and it took them a long time to coax me out. As I got older, I'd pass out at the sight of blood, or a needle. I've passed out in school during movies, at the doctor's office, at the dentist, and once almost dropped my newborn baby girl as I passed out when the oral surgeon was checking her father's mouth after his wisdom teeth had been removed. Even though he was just coming out of anesthesia, I had to hand her to him, because I was going down.

I worked on this phobia with an NLP Master (who happens to be my mom,) and with about two hours of therapy I was free of it. I haven't passed out at the sight of blood since. I even watched a PBS program that showed brain surgery in graphic detail to test my 'phobia cure,' and I got through it easily.In my HR manager position I did most of the first-aid treatment for the employees of the manufacturing firm where I worked, and patched up some pretty gory injuries before sending them off to the doctor or hospital. I would never have imagined I could so quickly and easily rid myself of a life-long phobia. But it worked, and it has stuck. I now get blood tests, novacaine, and have even undergone surgeries, and have taken them all in stride.

3. I love to bake - especially breads, cookies, and brownies. I don't really like to cook that much though. My husband does most of the cooking, and he's very good at it. He cooks, I clean up! Our second date was on New Year's Eve, and he cooked for me - a beautiful, romantic dinner. We shared a bottle of Dom Perignon. And that's been our New Year's Eve tradition every year since. New Year's Eve is at least as special to us as our anniversary. And since I met him, it's been my favorite holiday.

5. Between my husband and I we have five children, and they're all girls. His youngest daughter's first name is the same as my youngest daughter's middle name. We discovered many other coincidences as we were getting to know each other. Some examples: we both had a dog - both were labs - his chocolate, mine black. (George is actually a lab mix, but he looks almost all lab.) We were both driving the same make, model, and color car when we met. I named my very first dog, who I loved like no other pet before or since, the same name as my husband's middle name. Because he has the same first name as his father, he grew up being called by his middle name.

6. Our family is a mini-United Nations. We are English, Russian Jew, African American, Irish, Indian/Pakistani, German, Native American, Polish, Chinese, Greek, and more. Not all of those nationalities rolled into one person - we are a very diverse group of characters. My siblings and I grew up in a gem of a Chicago Northside neighborhood which was a mini-United Nations itself. The neighborhood in my eyes was idyllic, except for the requisite neighborhood bully. Our friends were Christian and Jew, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, Greek, Italian, and Eastern European. I never thought twice about the differences, which were mostly only skin deep. We grew up seeing the people, not the color of their skin, the shape of their eyes, their country of origin, their religion, their politics, or their disability.

We played with the boy with a club foot, the blind girl, a couple of developmentally-disabled kids on the block, and the three hearing-impaired sisters. I don't remember anyone ever being left out, and we figured out ways that everyone could play regardless of their limitations. The oldest hearing-impaired sister babysat for us. My mom didn't discriminate against her because she couldn't hear. She was competent and loving, and that was what mattered. Growing up in that environment and with the parents we had helped shape our values, those of our children, and hopefully future generations who will follow them.

(Photos courtesy of K, my oldest daughter, taken during her recent trip to the Chicago Botanic Gardens.)

post script. . . fact #4: Proofreading has never been my greatest skill.