7.24.09 The Honest Scrap Award

TinkerBelleKnits has gifted me with the Honest Scrap Award. Cathy is a local knit friend that is also a Wahoo. We will get to that in a minute.

I’m supposed to tell readers 10 things they may not know about me. Not so easy for me…and then I have to tag 10 people with this award, let them know they have received it. I will try.

Here goes:
1. I am 6′ tall and I hate basketball. My height is a huge part of my life. I grew up tall, not one of those growth spurt people. Pictures of me in school are always in the back row. I still get tall comments and jokes. I am constant search of jeans and jackets. Fortunately there are now a lot of internet resources for fashion, but they were not around when I went through the anorexic fashionably thin years. Damn it. Fortunately for my tall daughter I lived through growing up height-enhanced so I can sympathize and empathize with her struggles. My average height daughter is weirded out that she has such a tall family but then again she looks a little like my mother who is 5’2″. Yep. I lived through that too.

2. I am a Wahoo. That is, a graduate of the University of Virginia. Back in the day when Easter’s was still allowed. I have the stained tee shirt to prove it.

Cathy is a Wahoo too. I entered school in 1975 and was the first person in my family to graduate from college. It was a foreign world to me as I had no idea what to expect in college and most of what I learned had nothing to do with the classes I took. I thought I would major in English or History or French and go to law school. I ended up in a Biology major and graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing. Neither was a good choice but I made the best of it and worked as an RN for many years.

3. I taught myself to use a computer. The only help I had was from a couple of five year olds when I volunteered for my daughters’ kindergarten class computer lab. That is secretly why I did the volunteer thing. Oh, and the other mothers didn’t like computer lab, they wanted to talk to each other rather than help the kids.

3. I love art but I cannot draw or do anything art-wise. I was never allowed to take art classes after 7th grade because it was viewed as frivolous by my parents. I had to take typing and shorthand, marketable skills. I have used the typing but NEVER the shorthand. I sure would have used that class in color theory.

4. My father’s father was a weaver and loom fixer for the River View Mill in what is now called Valley Alabama. It is hot at h*ll in Alabama in the summer and I have no idea how those people survived without air conditioning in those mills.

5. I dislike cooking.

6. I am perfectly content doing nothing. What is that about?? I do think when I do nothing. It just looks lazy. This drove my mother crazy so I was rarely allowed to be idle. Therefore I learned to sew and visited elderly neighbors who were some of the most entertaining people I have ever met. One was responsible for getting me my first real job where I met Wendy. It was then that I refined my knitting skills.

7. I love candy. Any kind of candy. Mmmm.

8. I collect copies of gargoyles and grotesques. I know, weird. They are interesting! Plus, they protect me from evil. I have named some of them. This is Lars because he looks rather like Lars Ulrich of Metallica.

9. My bed has to be made before I can get into it. I usually make it in the morning but sometimes I don’t and I have to do it when I go to bed. Compulsive.

10. I LOVE clogs. Always have since the ’70s. These are my latest. When on vacation in North Carolina I visited the Endless Possibilities shop in Manteo. I ordered these clogs. They weave the fabric in colors that you designate then send the fabric off to the clog maker. I got them 8 weeks later. Cool no?

If you read this you are tagged!