browser life

Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. Here goes mine:

1. Since I had to put Chip D. Dog to sleep in October, I have heard and felt signs of him hanging around my house, like a thump on the floor next to the bed where he used to sleep, a sigh when I accidentally dropped his fave food in the kitchen, the sound of light footfalls near where his food dish used to be. I find it comforting.

2. I have above my computer a framed photo of sunset over Anna Maria Island in Florida. Next to that, a pic of the back of my husband with his arms around two wooden naked statues in Hawaii.

3. I spent Fourth of July last year watching lightning bugs in the front yard and the neighbors' illegal fireworks.

4. I'm not a good dancer, and I no longer am physically able to dance to an entire song, but I do the occasional Beyonce move when no one's looking. I also do a brief happy dance when the situation calls for it.

5. I do the word search puzzles that appear in the weekly paper my husband works for. But I can no longer do crypto quizzes. And if it's a puzzle involving numbers, forget it.

6. I try to exercise my brain every day because it's just as important as exercising my body. My fave "workouts" are Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Speaking of Wheel of Fortune, I watched a taping of it in Denver a few years ago.

7. Even though I was a graphic artist, I know next to nothing of a technical nature about computers. I know what's supposed to happen when you hit a certain key or click on the mouse, but have no idea WHY it works. And no clue about what to do when I don't get the expected result.

8. I don't think I'm ever going to feel like I belong in Sioux Falls. I am way too liberal and am uncomfortable living someplace where every single letter to the editor in the local newspaper quotes the Bible as if no other religion existed in the world. I miss seeing actual non-white people on a regular basis. I don't farm, I don't own livestock, I don't hunt, I don't have an ATV in my front yard, and while I have no problem with everyone who does, there just aren't many kindred spirits for me here.

9. I do enjoy some things about Sioux Falls, the main ones being the low crime rate, the low cost of living, and pleasant spring and fall seasons. There are lots of parks here, and the falls for which the city is named are pretty. I like the sculptures downtown that change annually. And people here have generally been very nice to me as long as I don't mention Obama or non-Christians.

10. Despite my extremely liberal approach to religion, I do pray and do believe there is an entity at the receiving end of those prayers. I also believe prayers can have miraculous consequences.

11. While in college, I became friends with several people who like me had not joined a sorority or fraternity. The Greeks called us GDIs (God-Damned Independents), but we called ourselves Zoners, as in the Twilight Zone (zoner also being a slang term for intoxicated). We partied to excess, something new to me at that time. Not all of us partook of mind-altering substances, but we did spend more time socializing than studying. As soon as I saw my grade point average dropping, though, I adapted a more moderate lifestyle because I could not afford to lose my scholarships. Most of the rest of the Zoners dropped out.

12. Even though I am an aunt now, I am still scared to death to hold a baby. I always think I will drop them or not hold their head up right or something.

13. I once worked for an International House of Pancakes that had cockroaches. I took the job because I had no car and needed a paying job within walking distance of my non-paying college internship. That IHOP thankfully was closed a few years later and replaced with a Japanese restaurant.

14. I just finished reading "Twilight" (and saw the movie last week). I miss books intended for grown-ups, but due to cognitive dysfunction, I can't get through many of them. After trying many times about three years ago to read a book about Katharine Hepburn's influence on feminism, I realized I would have to switch to simpler material. I now mostly alternate between books on health, young adult fiction and autobiography.

15. I invented my own clothing fashion rules while in high school, and they haven't changed. I still wear mainly black, white, red, pink, purple, blue or gray. Mostly solid colors; the few prints I own tend to be variations of one color or maybe two. I do not tuck in shirts or wear belts on my pants.

16. When I was a kid, I used to go to my grandparents' cabin in the Colorado mountains every weekend during the summer. The elevation was about 10,000 feet, I think, and the views were fantastic. I knew the rock formations like the back of my hand and could scramble up them like a mountain goat. I would pick wild raspberries, hike to the creek, feed chipmunks from my hand and scare the piss out of my cousin and sister making up stories after dark. As an adult, I would drive to the cabin to escape from the city and to take photographs and write poetry. I miss the mountains terribly.

17. I am embarrassed that I don't know all the names of the countries from the former USSR or other countries that formed after I graduated from college.

18. Were I healthy and not deaf in one ear (which permanently affects balance), I would own a motorcycle.

19. Every once in awhile, despite my cognitive dysfunction, I will blurt out something really brilliant that will amaze my husband and even myself. And I will usually have no idea where I got that information.

20. I like food a lot more than I like cooking it.

21. One of the biggest life lessons I have learned (not always by choice) is to do the best I can with whatever I have to work with, and enjoy what I do have. Envying those with more money, better health, better luck, etc. is a waste of precious energy. I think it is important to learn to have a sense of what is enough. So I don't have the newest or best of this or that; most of the time, what I already have is enough. That is not to say I don't aspire to more; it's just that I don't consider myself a failure if I don't reach every goal every time. I cut myself some slack.

22. I for the most part, I am more offended by gratuitous violence than by gratuitous sex.

23. I used to do hip hop aerobics, and I loved it. It was so much fun that it didn't feel like exercise. And the class was so crowded that no one noticed how uncoordinated I was.

24. I have a truly amazing spouse. When I first met him, I was suspicious because he seemed too good to be true. Turns out my expectations prior to him had just been too low, lol. We've been married twelve years, and we still do things like fall asleep holding hands. Thank goodness he appreciates my sense of humor. And even though I haven't the energy to keep up my appearance, he somehow finds me attractive. For the rest of my life I will be grateful I found him.

25. I did not own a television from 1982-1987. Thanks to night jobs, I watched almost no prime time network programming even after I got a TV. Now that I am too disabled to work, I record 12 prime time network shows per week on the DVR. Kinda creepy.