Nearest Book Meme

The Rules:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.


Two of those ministers were Francis Hutcheson's grandfather and father. John Hutchenson was pastor of Armagh when his son Francis was born in 1694. Francis received his first education at his grandfather's house. It seemed only natural and proper that he follow in their footsteps as a minister.

By then the Ulster Scots community had been through much. In the decades before Hutcheson's birth they had endured massacre by dispossessed Irish Catholics, including the wholesale murder of men, women and children at Portadown in 1641, and paid them back in kind. Many had signed the National Covenant, and backed the Parliamentary forces against Charles I.

(Photo provided by Duluth Trading Company)

6 Random Things

My friend Sean tagged me with this meme. I am supposed to post 6 random things about myself.

1) I was the youngest person in my high school graduating class.
2) I was once hit on by Lemmy of Motorhead (lucky me!) at the Rainbow on Sunset Strip.
3) I have an extreme dislike for plastic baby dolls.
4) I love meatloaf sandwiches!
5) I dream of having an herb farm.
6) Before I had kids, I had 2 dogs, 2 cats, 3 ferrets, 2 rats, a snake and 2 tanks of fish all at the same time! No wonder I had a hard time studying in college!

150th Post

For my 150th post, I considered doing a random, 150 things about me, but figured 150 things is ALOT. So how about I narrow it down to 50.

1. I've been happily married for 13 1/2 years!
2. I've got two SUPER cool kiddos.
3. I share my home with Otis the Wonderdog, or Otis Potis Who Drinks from the Commodus.
3. I grew up in New Mexico.
4. I currently reside in Texas.
5. I wish I still lived in Oregon!
6. I homeschool my kids.
7. I think farting is funny!
8. I hate fire ants!
9. My favorite sandwich is a meatloaf sandwich, mmmmmm!
10. I have one tattoo, hoping to get another one soon.
11. I love to cook, but HATE to clean up after myself.
12. I'm estranged from my father.
13. But I love my Mama and my in-laws.
14. I think Valentine's Day is STUPID.
15. I generally like animals more than people.
16. My favorite colors are emerald green and sunshine yellow.
17. I seem to always be the person who steps in gum (I suppose better gum than dogshit).
18. I color my hair because I am growing older kicking and screaming (and I've forgotten what my natural color is)!
19. Even after 2 kids, I still wear a size 5 (and I'm proud of myself for that!)
20. I think gumdrops are disgusting!
21. I think rice pudding is awesome!
22. I hate to drive.
23. I always paint my toenails, but NEVER paint my fingernails.
24. I'm a licensed massage therapist, but very rarely practice.
25. I have a degree in Biology with emphasis in physiology and zoology.
26. One of my biggest pet peeves is bad spelling.
27. Another big pet peeve is women that wear too much perfume, GAG!
28. I totally suck at sports!
29. But I take some pretty awesome photos.
30. I am loyal and trustworthy to a fault!
31. My favorite part of my body is my feet, they are long, slender and gorgeous when my toenails are painted!
31. My least favorite part of my body is my fingers, I chew on my hangnails when I'm nervous.
32. Sproingy food makes me gag (calamari, chicken skin, etc...).
33. I have never been overseas.
34. I like to garden, but think I suck at it.
35. I can lay tile and hardwood floors and paint like a son of a bitch!
36. Strawberries and fresh peaches are my favorite fruits.
37. If I wasn't married, I'd very much like to "do" Johnny Depp! ;-)
38. I drink hot tea, English style, every morning, even in the middle of summer.
39. I've always wanted to visit Australia, Scotland and Bora Bora.
40. I never intended to have children, but I have never loved anything so fiercely in all my life!
41. I used to have hair down to my arse!
42. My dream car is a 1963 black Corvette Stingray
43. I secretly wish my hubby had a Harley and would grow his hair back and get a tattoo!
44. I'm an only child.
45. Stupid people piss me off.
46. I want to write children's books.
47. I'm pretty sure I talk too much!
48. My favorite animals are otters and hippopotamuses!
49. When I grow up I want to be a roller derby queen!
50. I actually enjoy writing this stupid blog!

Book Meme

My friend Sean posted a book meme that I thought was interesting so I thought I'd participate. You have to go to the nearest book that has over 123 pages, go to p. 123, find the first 5 sentences, then post the next 3. You're supposed to send it on to 5 other bloggers, but I don't know that many, so there ya have it. But I still thought it was kind of cool.


"At the microscopic level, it gives each of our tissues and organs its distinctive appearance and function. An eyeball looks different from a leg bone whether we look at it with the naked eye or under a microscope. In fact, much of the difference between a leg bone and an eye rests in the ways the cells and materials are arranged deep inside."

So what is the book?

YOUR INNER FISH--A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Written by Neil Shubin

I haven't started reading this yet, but plan to knock it out over the next week, seems fascinating! I can't wait!

Guess I'm Kermit!

You Are Kermit

Hi, ho! Lovable and friendly, you get along well with everyone you know. You're a big thinker, and sometimes you over think life's problems. Don't worry - everyone know's it's not easy being green. Just remember, time's fun when you're having flies!

The Muppet Personality Test

Tagged into the paranormal

I have been tagged by Sean, this was an interesting topic to delve into. The paranormal and supernatural have always been something I enjoy! However, as I really don't know many bloggers, this portion of the tag will stop with me. I guess I should maybe work on networking a bit more in the New Year! Thanks for including me and letting me play!

The Rules

You should post these rules
Recall and relate a time when you experienced a "paranormal event"
Explain it rationally if you can
Inflict this meme on 5 other people

It is hard for me to pick a specific moment that I experienced a paranormal event. I have had many unexplained occurrences throughout my life, some of which occurred over long periods of time. When I was young, my great-aunt Ruth lived next door to my grandparents. She was never married and lived in the home that belonged to her parents. Since she was right next door to my grandparents I spent alot of time with her. I LOVED going to her house to visit, but for some reason, the upstairs bedroom was always a little scary to me. It was a gorgeous room, painted a lovely, light blue with lots of windows and light, it even had it's own fireplace, very much like a little studio apartment (minus the kitchen)! You would have thought it would be a wonderful place for a child to explore with all the old books and music boxes and closets full of my great-aunts racy, roach-killer heels, flowery hats, and boxes full of costume jewelry! But I very rarely ventured up there alone and when I did, I only lasted a few minutes before absolute panic would set in and I'd go flying back down the stairs to safety.

As it happens, my great-aunt became ill with Alzheimer's and she was moved to a nursing home around the time my parents divorced, so my mother and I moved into the house, I was about 10 or 11. I of course took one of the downstairs bedrooms because of my fear of the upstairs. At some point I began longing for more privacy and therefore decided I should conquer my fears and move upstairs to the cool bedroom (it was the coolest room a kid could ask for with that fireplace, sitting area and my own bathroom)! So I started to spend more time up there, trying to get a grip. It was strange, but I always just "felt" like I was not alone up there and I distinctly felt that their were two or three different entities (for lack of a better description) and I just felt that they were female. At this point I didn't necessarily feel threatened, in some instances I actually felt comfort, a strange familiarity. So I wasn't as fearful as I was when I was a small child, but it was still strange and somewhat unnerving. There was one occasion that I recall actually seeing something that spooked me. I was sitting on the bed and happened to look over by the fireplace and it seemed as though the chair was rocking, not hard, but slowly and somewhat deliberately. I didn't see an entity per se, but just remember having a clear picture in my mind an old woman rocking slowly in the chair, knitting or something. But I swear that I saw that chair rock and it freaked me out a bit. Needless to say my move upstairs was postponed awhile.

We eventually painted the room, hung new curtains and moved a new bedroom set upstairs. I also hung a few poster of my favorite band at the time Motley Crue (who I still love by the way)! Now I don't know if it was the paint, or the posters with pentagrams or the fact that I just finally conquered my fears, but AFTER that room was transformed from a proper lady's bedroom/dressing room into a teenagers dream room, I never "felt" the presences again.

Now as family history would have it, my great-grandmother occupied that house but she didn't die there (in fact if I remember correctly she passed away at a ENMU basketball game while sitting in the stands). And I'm not sure if she ever lived in that house, but my great-aunt Audean also passed away from tuberculosis when she was a young woman. Now whether the things I felt and saw had anything to do with them, I have no idea. As far as my great-grandmother, it wouldn't seem that far-fetched for her to return to the home she loved and as far as Aunt Audean, would it be such a stretch to think she and her mother might have been reunited in whatever sense that might happen?

Now, can any of this be proven? Of course not. Do I believe in ghosts? Maybe. There are things in the universe that I can't even begin to fathom. Are there ghosts, are there just changes in the energy around us, are there multiple dimensions in which we exist? Again, I cannot claim to know as only the dead can know what happens or does not happen. But what I do know is that from the time I was a very small child, until I was a teenager, that room seemed to possess something that I could not explain. When I eventually discussed this with my mother, she admitted that she had similar feelings about that room when she was young, but she wasn't afraid of ghosts, she was convinced there were gorillas in the closet! Yikes!

I've Been Tagged

Ginny Glasser tagged me! But here's the sad thing, she is the only one I know who blogs in the public domain. All of my other blog friends blog on private spaces about their kiddos. So unfortunately, although I can participate, I can only tag her back or tag my other blog! I need to make more blogger friends!

1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before
we give you the facts.
3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about
themselves.
4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about
their eight things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, 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.

Anyway, for anyone who's interested here are my 8...

1. I always thought I was a bad girl, but it turns out I'm really not! All throughout my teenage years I was a party animal with lots of boyfriends, I was destined to be a rockstar (or at the very least a rockstar's girlfriend). I love tattoos, black high-heel boots, heavy metal and punk rock and I have a the worst foul mouth (I could make a trucker or a sailor blush!). And although I had a great time in my wild life, I settled very easily into marriage and motherhood. I've been married for almost 13 years, I have 2 beautiful children (5 and 12 mos) and my life is so much more meaniful and joyful than I could have ever imagined. Sometimes I feel I I've lost a little of what made me "ME", but maybe I didn't lose anything, maybe I just evolved.

2. I like animals more than I like most people.

3. I seem to have the gift of gab. I am one of those people that can never tell a short story. I am ALL about the detail.

4. When I was 3 or 4 I got a HUGE tick in my ear and when my mom pulled it out, she put it in a jar of alcohol and I kept it on my dresser and named it Edward.

5. Although I live in Texas, my soul belongs in Oregon. When I lived there, surrounded by green, flowers, forest, and ocean my heart was full of joy and for the first time in my life I felt honestly and truly like I was home. I miss it!

6. I never wanted to be a mother, my son was a surprise, but I find it odd that the one thing I NEVER wanted to be turned out to be the one thing that I am truly happy with and truly good at.

7. I used to play bass guitar in several bands, in high school I was in the all-girl glam band Shameful Pain, then I moved on to a thrash metal band called Screamer, then I moved to Phoenix where I played in a band called Gutterslut, then in ABQ I dabbled in a punk band we called Coprophagy (go look that one up, it's funny!).

8. I once broke a guy's nose for hitting me!