Me, Me, Meme

Hal tagged me a while back, and I thought that today, my 50th birthday, would be a great day to finally get it finished off.

Link to the person who tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.


Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.


Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.


Let people know they've been tagged by leaving comments on their blogs.
Okay, here goes.

1. I'm an actor. I first appeared on stage at Bullhead City Elementary School in the role of "Princess" age age seven. With some breaks here and there, I did theatre pretty much regularly until 2000 (when Jake was born) with one encore in Sylvia at the Cascade Theater. It was the second play they did there after the reopening. I think I'm pretty good at it, and I'm starting to really miss it, but as a single mom who doesn't want to leave the kids with a sitter all the time, it's going to be a while before I get back on the boards. My favorite role - tie between Nora in A Doll's House and Mona in Come back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean. But Stella in Streetcar was pretty darn fun, too. But, wait! I really like comedies, too! Okay, I love it all. I love crying my eyes out and slapstick humor, and making people cry with me and laugh at me.

2. Once I walked 60 miles in 3 days to raise money to fight breast cancer. It was honestly one of the biggest things I've ever done. The training, the fund-raising, the sheer pain (I think that was pretty much when I finished off the cartilage in my left knee).

3. I had a truly bizarre childhood. I was the cherished daughter of a Russian composer/conductor who scored over 200 movies for Columbia, and a French model (okay, she was born in France, but grew up in LA). We lived in Mandeville Canyon, and had Glen Ford and Fernando Lamas as neighbors. That idyllic life came crashing down when I was two and my father died. When I was four, my mom remarried a man who worked in the gaming industry. We moved a lot, but ended up in Bullhead City, Arizona (of all places). My mom died when I was ten, my step-dad died when I was 13 and I finished off my childhood living in a foster home in Kingman, Arizona. All of these events shaped me into the twisted person I am now.

3. I do my very best to follow Jesus. He's my friend and my savior, and I don't do Him justice. But He's never left me. And I have to say, I've met the most amazing people through Him.

4. I can cross my left eye while keeping my right eye looking straight ahead. I was bored a lot in elementary school, and this is where I perfected the talent.

5. I love tea. I really like coffee, too, but tea is really where my heart lies. I love the taste, I love the ritual. I hate the way it stains my teeth, and spend a fortune on whitening. My favorite is Russian Caravan.

6. People tell me their life stories. People I've just met, people I work with, people I've known for years. And I carry their stories and their joys and their pain forever after. My boss' wife told me it's because of my aura. Well, I have a dear friend named Aura and I don't think she has a darned thing to do with it. But I really should call her soon, anyway. Maybe we could get together for tea.

7. I was the girl whose photo in the yearbook topped my wish to have a dozen kids, but I didn't become a mom until I was 41. I thought I'd never have kids, but I guess God had a different plan for me. My parts didn't work, but there were two women who were able to have babies, but just didn't have their lives together and they lost their privilege to parent. That breaks my heart at the very same time that I cherish my babies and can't imagine my life without them. Adopting through concurrent planning was a riotous roller-coaster of emotion and I don't think I could do it again. It was a huge contributory factor to the demise of my marriage (I found out that my ex had met his "soulmate" and wanted to leave me only two months after we finalized our daughter's adoption), and that absolutely breaks my heart more than anything else in my life. But my ex and I manage to do a fairly reasonable job of co-parenting (even though he's on his 4th or 5th soulmate since then). It will never, ever be the same as having them grow up in a loving home with the both of us, but I guess it will have to do.


And, now that I have you just where I wanted you, here are my tags:

Emily
Jessica
Erica
Keith
Lorraine
Lisa
Sean