I always see these memes out there, where people tag other people and ask them to share 3 things, 5 things, 8 things, secret things etc etc..about themselves. Instead of doing memes or tagging someone else, I just figured I would be direct…and tell you a few things that you don’t know about me.
1. I was a cheerleader in High School. 3 years of football and only 1 year of basketball. I didn’t really like basketball, so I stuck with football. It was so much fun, but pretty hard. Try-outs were nerve-wracking and nail-biting..and I was never a ‘popular’ kid in school, so that made it so much harder for me. We didn’t do all these fancy acrobatic tricks or go to competitions like schools do now, although I could do a split (oh, how I wish). Ours were more cheers, jumps and routines set to music. To this day I still remember a few of my routines..to Van Halen’s Jump, Eddy Grant’s Electric Avenue and Prince’s I would Die 4 U.
2. NO LAUGHING! Yes, I must stress that before I tell you this one. I used to play the accordion! I wanted to take the flute, or the clarinet…and be part of the school band. Yet my parents, for some cruel reason that I have never tried to uncover and have spend years avoiding the question, decided that the accordion would be better. It came in handy at parties when I could play the polka for my German family members. NOT. Later, after my Grandfather died and left his Hammond organ to my Mom, I ditched the accordion and opted to play the organ. I took lessons for years, but never made it to school band. We did not have an organ or accordion player in our band. Come to think of it…does any school have these people in the band???
3. I won an Award from President Ronald Regan. I was involved in the Junior Grange as a kid. One year, with the help of my father, our grange members planted hybrid poplar trees in an effort to explore alternate energy sources. It had something to do with the poplar trees being converted into gas-a-hol and then the trees rejuvenated themselves very quickly and could be used again. The President found out about our experiment and awarded each of us a commendation. I guess I was just one step away from ‘An Inconvenient Truth’
4. I am 9 years older than my sister and my parents chose me to be her Godmother. I was so excited that I would get to hold my little baby sister at the Baptism…I blathered on for weeks about it! Until I got the Chicken Pox! Imagine my chagrin when my Mom told me that I had to stay home and that I couldn’t go to the Church. My Mom said that my cousin would ‘stand in for me’…and that technically I would still be her Godmother…..but try to tell that to a crying 9 year old! I was crushed for days after.
5. About 10 years ago, we picked up and moved across the country and landed in Walnut Creek, California. Both cars loaded, we drove in February and took the Southern route to avoid snow. We planned to drive up the coast of California and camp near the ocean, but as luck would have it, it was an El Nino year and the storms were so severe that much of the coast had been washed away! We drove through heavy blinding rainfall..the kind that seemed like sheets laying on top of your windshield. We arrived safely and stayed for about 18 months, before I decided to come back. During that time, I felt like I was on a big vacation, we did so much. San Francisco, Monterey, San Diego, Napa Valley, Calistoga, Lake Tahoe, Mendocino and Sausalito…just to name a few. Maybe I was just ‘testing the waters’ for a move across the Atlantic. To Italy or France maybe….