Ooh! A Meme!

Rules: Once tagged, you’re supposed to link to the person who tagged you. Then, post the rules before your list and list 8 random things about yourself. At the end of the post, tag and link to 8 other people and then leave them a comment telling them they’ve been tagged.

I have to admit, I'm not exactly sure how to link back to someone, but this was from Pearl, so if you click on her name, you can visit her blog, which is very interesting and, I think, inspiring. So, before I begin my 8 random facts, I'd like to tag: Devinoni, Darla D, Mommanator, Sonnjea (who has probably long since stopped reading this), VirginiaGal, NubianTemptress and JoeinVegas. I've pared down some of my blog-reading in the last few months, so if I haven't included you and you're reading this, just please forgive me as I'm trying to get back on the horse. (Seven is almost 8, right?)

1. Unlike most people I know, I never went through a phase when I disliked my middle name. I have always loved the fact that is unusual and evocative. To this day, I love seeing people cock their heads to the side in amusement when I tell them what it is.

2. When I was a little girl, sometimes I'd be very disoriented when waking up. It wasn't the disorientation you feel like when you wake up in another room and you've forgotten that you went to sleep there. Nor that you're coming out of a dream. I would lie in bed, hear the voices of my family throughout the house and intellectually understand they were my family, but feel emotionally unattached. Almost like I was a character in a play, aware that I was in a play. I would hear my parents in the hallway and think: "They are not really my parents," and I could feel in my bones that I had been somehow dropped into this realm accidentally. Like something out of Quantum Leap - but these episodes predated Quantum Leap, so the idea was my own. I knew, for those nano-seconds, that those voices did not belong to my real family. Because my real family lived in outerspace and we were all fuzzy Sesame Street-style monsters. And if I closed my eyes and opened them again, I'd see my blue familiar parents hovering over me. It would take me a few seconds to shake out of it and sometimes I'd have a little twingey head pain. I outgrew this by about the time I was 9 or 10.

3. Also as a child, I had recurring dreams of Mahatma Ghandi falling into infinite blackness against a neon spiral. I was worried for him and it scared me.

4. I tend to dislike things that people like, or that are expected of me to like, just to be contrary. Not that my dislike isn't genuine, it's just if it's expected of me to feel positively about something, I'm going to approach it with a dim view first. The same is true about things that are expected of me to dislike. I'll probably like it at the outset, just to be contrary; but I'm not going to dislike it just because everyone else feels strongly about it.

5. Despite my mother's best efforts to fight it, I really do like Willie Nelson. And Johnny Cash. And any country music that tells a heartbreaking story; not dolled up for the slick Nashville types. (see number 4.)

6. Even in my ugliest cynicism, I can't deny that I still believe the sun'll come out tomorrow.

7. In 1995, I had a random, unsolicited metaphysical experience with the color yellow.

8. I think one should know when her life is a movie. It's important to recognize certain plot points and recurring elements in your life. You should always be aware of visual motifs and musical themes as well as cheesy dialogue. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that sometimes my life is a movie. Oh, look, there's that irritating tertiary character from act one emerging in act three to save the day. She's going to try to pull off what? Well, in the real world, she'd get away with it, but this is a movie and karma has a way of making sure she won't. ... and I don't. I'm learning to listen for the swelling music and look for the visual motifs.

... and a bonus. For all of these above random things about myself, I am stunned that there is a person willing (and I hope happy) to spend the rest of his life with me.