8 Things You Might Not Know (or want to know) About Me

I’ve been tagged by Sandi to reveal 8 tidbits of otherwise unrevealed information about me–stuff most of you don’t know. Ok, some of you family members might remember, but don’t tell.

1. I was a Princess Diana freak. I mean, I collected scrapbooks of every news article I could find on her and Prince Charles. I tried to stay up (or wake up) for their wedding in 1981, but it didn’t happen so I caught the taped version a few hours later. I was appallingly zealous about them in the early 80s, though my obsession toned down as I got to high school and their marriage got rocky. By 1990 I was back to normal. But to give you an idea of how over-the-top I was about it as a child…when Diana died in 1997, a few months after my wedding, my older step-sister who lived in St. Louis called to see if I was OK.

2. I had perfect attendance at school until my sophomore year, when I got sufficiently sick that my mother was convinced I needed a day in bed. The irony? On that one day of that one year in my school history, it snowed. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen in Baton Rouge, LA. While I missed the snowball fights against the teachers, I did cough and hack my way through building a snowman with my family later that afternoon. No way was I going to miss that!

3. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. (OK, maybe most of you already knew that.)

4. I played four sports as a child: soccer (4 years), basketball (4 years), volleyball (5 years), and fastpitch softball (10 years). My mom (wisely) made me choose two of those when I started high school…gotta focus!

5. My first writeup in the local newspaper wasn’t written by me, it was about me! 6th grade, May 6 (my mom’s birthday, no less), my soccer team won the state championship. I happened to make the winning goal from almost mid-field, so the reporter talked to me. I would have enjoyed the experience more if I didn’t know that I had to bolt from there to go pitch at a softball tournament…I was exhausted.

6. My favorite room in my house is my office–because it is also my library. I love my book collection.

7. My family used to vacation by driving cross-country in our van, pulling our camper. We started with a pop-up, graduated to a larger, more convenient RV, and spent two or three weeks of most summers taking in the sights of America the Beautiful. Colorado, the Tetons, Yellowstone, the Southeast, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, New York…

8. My co-author, Sue Edwards, is the mother of an old friend from Pine Cove, a Christian camp in Tyler, TX. Her daughter and I look a lot alike, so one day during summer camp we switched nametags to see if we could trick our 6th-grade girls. All counselors at Pine Cove are given special camp names, so for that day I became “Chubby Bunny” (her name) and she became “Edelweiss” (my name). It worked! Those kids were so confused by lunch time; by dinner we gave in and confessed.

There you have it. Now, I’m supposed to tag 8 more people, but I don’t read that many unique blogs (some have already been tagged). But Shannon, Erica, and Jenny…have fun!