Here’s an ‘Eight Things About Me’ Meme

Over at Webs Random Ideas I was tagged to write some answers for the Eight Things About Me meme.
Along with the Evil One, Decrepit Old Fool, and A View to an Uzz, I do believe I’ll join in.

* Players have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
* Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
* People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.*
Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

~~When I look in the mirror today, I am surprised that my face is not 33 years old.  That first birthday, the summer after my dad died, I took it hard.  My mind couldn’t comprehend such loss.
Earning an Associate of Arts degree the same month I made it to age 50 is helping me to get back on track.  I hadn’t really planned on using up so many years from my body.

~~When I walked down the aisle for my wedding, the rain of an Autumn thunderstorm was pounding on the roof of the church.  I remember thinking I was glad for the darker quality in the pictures because the hideous yellow glass windows of the building messed up so many celebration photo opps.
The windows are still there, but carefully covered with blinds.

~~When I was in 3rd grade, I was done with my work, and it was almost time for recess.  In anticipation, I took my ball and jacks bag out and laid it on the corner of my desk.  My Aunt Sylvia was a seamstress/alterations expert for a department store, and she had sewn the bag for me out of a scrap of purple velvet.
Grandma used her long crochet hook to pull through a gold colored string to close it.
I loved that drawstring bag, and my friends and I had so much fun playing jacks on the playground.

My teacher was walking up and down the aisles making sure students stayed working.  She scooped up my purple bag with her hand, went up to her desk, opened the bottom drawer, and dropped my bag into it.  I don’t know why—I wasn’t bothering with it or disturbing my neighbors.

When it came time for recess, I asked for my jacks.  She said no, that I had to wait until school was over.

It was a long and dismal afternoon for me.

At the end of the day, I went up and waited beside her desk.  She opened her bottom drawer, but my bag of ball and jacks was not there.  She seemed as surprised as I was.

I cried all the way home.

My mother wrote a note for the teacher, about how if the bag got returned she would make sure I wouldn’t carry it to school to cause any more trouble (I never understood what trouble I was in anyway—the bag was just waiting there on my desk).
I never heard anything else about it.

My purple bag never did come back to me.

Since then, I crocheted two more purple bags w/ yellow strings

but I still wonder if the velvet one made someone else happy

~~Finding and reading the works of so many interesting blogging friends, and using my computer for news and research, I rarely read a real book now.  When I do, I prefer hardback.

~~My first job was when I was 12 years old, washing the floor for a neighbor lady.  I would get my own chores done at home first, then go to her house later on Saturdays.  I had to take all the chairs to the other room, pick up the scatter rugs and take them outside to shake hard.  I had to sweep every corner of the kitchen and small bathroom just off it.
On my hands and knees, using rag and bucket full of “hot, soapy ammonia water” filled from the bathtub faucet, I would wash the floors, then go over it again with rinse water.

While we waited for the floor to dry, we would sit in wingback chairs in the front room, having a treat of cookies and tea from a tray on the coffee table.  The tea had been waiting in a china pot under a crocheted cozy, but sometimes was lukewarm by the time we got to it.
When the floor was ready, I put back the rugs and chairs and got “paid for my time”.

Mrs. T would hand me $5 for this work of just over an hour.
This was high wages for a girl my age, plus tea and cookies was yummy.

~~My husband taught me to drive a clutch-and-stickshift car a few months after we got married.  I came to prefer to drive a car with a standard transmission, but I fear my sore wrists will protest.  It doesn’t matter right this minute, the car we own has an automatic, and we don’t plan on buying another car soon.

~~In our bedroom, I keep a small stool beside the chest of drawers.  When I get dressed in the morning, I sit on the stool to put on my socks, start my pants, then my shoes.
I had to figure out how to do this when I had a job beginning at 5:45am and didn’t want to bother my husband sleeping on the other side of the bed.

~~I don’t like Corelleware dishes because of the sound the utensil makes when I’m picking up the noodles or whatever food is there.  I much prefer melamine, because it meets the metal with a more pleasant tone.
When my father-in-law gave me a set of Corelleware dishes for a Christmas gift, I politely wrote a Thank You note, then put them into a side cupboard still in their box.
My husband brought them back out and insisted we use them, until one of our sons shoved a dish off the tray of the high chair.  The plate shattered into a million pointy sharp pieces.

These days, we have a couple Corelleware plates for use in the microwave, but all others are long gone without regrets.
If I could be dictator in the church kitchen, those Corelleware dishes would meet the same fate.

There, eight little stories.  Now I am supposed to Tag somebody.
Most of the folks I read out there in Blogland already have so much to say that they don’t need any prompting or making a list.

No, I think I’ll follow DOF’s lead and say
“if you feel like picking it up, enjoy!”

~~love and Huggs, Diane