Tag? I'm It? Family Secrets? Not No More!

Kathy tagged me and I believe that I am to tell five things you do not know about me. Which could be very different from telling five things you might not know which then could be an extremely short list - five things to be exact. But I am going with the first interpretation only cause I am feeling very writy.

Since I am writing to such a mixed crowd of people, some have known me for over eighteen years, some have only known me here for months or weeks, and some somewhere in between, I am just gonna let 'er rip. When you have discovered your five things you didn't know about me you can be done. (There may be things on this list that you knew but did you know I knew, and isn't that the point of getting to know someone? There are things you may even have guessed about me but did you know them for sure?)

When I am done I will not be tagging anyone else 'cause I doubt I have five people who read this who have not already been tagged by this whole thing but if you feel like playing along and you haven't been tagged then by all means "tag, your next" .

I love and worship one God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I have loved him ever since I can remember. When I was just a little first grader and experienced my first Lenten season of being in Mass everyday and every Friday going through the Stations of the Cross I marveling at what Christ had done. I felt so close to him. I loved to gaze upon the pictures and crucifix that depicted His love for me, for man. And I was amazed, every day amazed. I know that I became a Christian sometime before that point in my history.

I really enjoy living on a farm not to far from where I grew up. I don't even mind that we have only rented and that we have no "family" home to pass down. Who knows, Dale, our landlord and his wife Norrine, could possibly die tomorrow and we would be without a house for ourselves or our animals. But that is really okay with Dirt and I, we are confident that God will have something in store for us that we cannot even imagine.

While I do not have a conversion "experience" that I can recall there were times in my life when I wished I could fake a new one so that I could have one to talk about but most of all so that I would not feel so crushingly horrible about my hideous rebellion toward the God I loved and desired to follow ever since I could remember.

I spell like a frog on acid. That's wierd doncha think. Oh wait, that word is "wierd" because it really is weird, even though the w is not a c, nor is the ie pronounced as "a" as in "neighbor and weigh" But I have no excuse for stolve, or most of the zillion other words I cannot seem to bring myself to spell correctly.

I am forever thankful that God's mercy and grace extended to me as a believer even after I committed every possible sin, most of them many times over, in just five years between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. I was a murderer, a cheat, a marriage ruin-er, a liar, a God deny-er, a fornicator, a parent dishonor-er, an idol worshipper, a thief. And not in a sermon-on-the-mount sorta way but in a ten commandments sorta way, but God had reconciled me to Him, not just positionally, eternally, but here on earth yesterday and today. I may stumble but I know longer wallow in filth and vomit.

I like apple pie, I didn't as a child, but I do now. I also really enjoy mincemeat (lots of whip), pecan (warm, lots of whip), cherry (warm with ice cream), any berry especially huckleberry on Thanksgiving, pumpkin (lots of whip), sour cream raisin, lemon meringue. I like to make banana and coconut cream and I'll eat them, but not excitedly.

Here is something else you may not know, about me. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no one is un-redeemable, and it is heinous for any Christian to believe that any unbeliever or screwed-up-believer is beyond God's loving hand. I trust my God and I know my God can do anything, absolutely anything He chooses to do. But for any one of us to write someone off, to give up on someone, to say we have said enough, prayed enough, waited for long enough, been in pain over for far too long, think that they are beyond the touch of God, then betcha by golly wow we better be darn glad God does not think the same of us.

I really, really like commas; and semi colons are just too cute not to use a few each day!

I love my husband with the love God instilled in me to have for Dirt. I love my sons and daughters with the very same love from God.

My mother, bless her constantly-challenged-but-now-resting-with-God heart, was an English teacher who could write in Latin (of course there was no one in my world who could verify that what she wrote was correct but I believed her). She was awesome and very sought after for her talents as a teacher, a teacher of teachers in a field that she co-authored and later as a story teller. She would be bursting at the seams over this year's election, and busting with pride that finally her daughter was voting the right way (but still sad that I have not yet grasped the art of spelling or the capability of writing a decent, readable sentence)

We only have eight cats at the moment.

I dislike the phrase "in-law". God knit first Eric and then Mike and someday, God willing, two more men into Dirt's and my heart as if they were our very own sons. So how can I call them "in-law" when it is hardly the "law" that put them in my heart? Aside from my feelings even is the fact that God made Eric one with Steph and Mike one with Michelle, when I love one I love the other, the two can not be separated ever. I do however understand that I am very weird and no one understands when I say I have two married daughters but no sons-in-law.

We have nine dogs and it is the first time on this farm that the dogs out number the cats.

I suspect that my father would be busting out of himself over this election. He would have been wild over both McCain and Palin. I could almost hear him cheering with me as I listened to both speeches.

Mis-spellings are not the same as mis-typings where my fingers forget who they are and think they are a different finger or one of my "clever" fingers rushes ahead of one of my slower fingers. As clever as those fingers think they are it is interesting that they make the same mistake of arrogant impetuousness over and over again. (You may not have know that I think of my fingers as nearly separate entities, you may have guessed or you may not be surprised but did you know?)

My father owned four small businesses and was a consultant to others by the time cancer made him stop doing everything including living here on earth. During his life people often said that he reminded them of John Wayne, which always pleased my dad as he enjoyed the comparison. He was a hard working man, who never asked of his few employees what he wasn't willing to do himself. He had huge permanently stained hands, hands I thought all real dads had. He wore jeans that he cuffed.

I had a blue room as a girl, when I wasn't being shoved off to the sister in the yellow room. But when they had both left for college I resided in the blue room. Which I loved until our house was burglarized and the look out creep stubbed out a cigarette on my head board and one of the creeps defecated on the floor of the yellow bedroom.

I don't believe the death penalty should be used in any circumstance, in spite of how I feel at the moment of hearing about some horrific crime, see the statement above where I say that there is no one un-redeemable, and perhaps you'll understand why, but then maybe those two are totally disconnected for you, that's okay.

I have three brothers and two sisters. Did I mention we were a Catholic family? Just seven kids shy of a visit from the bishop or cardinal I can't remember which. Most of us married, all of us have children. I was the youngest but the first grandmother among my siblings. Their children were all waiting to finish college and save enough for elaborate honey-moons. Did I mention we once were a Catholic family?

I like horses, especially their fragrance. I like gardening and flowers for those fragrances too.

My mom's yard was featured in Sunset Magazine. My father hand dug most of our Christmas trees which he later planted in the yard. Not to mention all the "green" deer he came home with from hunting trips, no need to skin those "deer" just plant them. So my folks' house and yard got the write up but my dad had already passed by then. But I guess for him and where he is that was really small potatoes.

In some of my past gardens I have even grown my own dried beans. Did I mention that I live in the Pacific Northwest, the wetside? (pat of the back please)

My eyes are hazel, my hair used to be blonde then it went dark and now it is grey, not dyed. I'm 5'6.5" I have big feet and even larger hands.

My mom is from North Dakota and my dad from Okanogan County.

I scream when I unexpectedly see mice, although I don't hold my scream for as long as I used to, which used to be about five minutes (maybe they could die by being screamed at). Mind you I am not afraid of them and would even play and hold them (if I was sure they didn't have rabies (I read Ol Yeller)).

My folks were very aware of the hardships of the Depression. My mom witnessed first hand how finances destroyed the people she loved. She and my father worked very hard to ensure that that would never happen in their own family.

Dirt, my husband, has had his nickname ever since he was little. It has to do with being a catcher and the dirt sliding down his face from putting the catchers mask back on and then it stuck because of signs that would say: "fill dirt wanted" (Phil pronounced fill, get it?) But I like the signs that say: "Clean fill wanted." He works in aviation mechanics (he teaches it) and consequently always smells like my least favorite fragrance - fuel. Did I mention that one of my father's businesses was a service station (ask your dad what those are) and a fuel oil delivery service. Loved the dad, loved the station and the trucks, hated the smell.

I am really pretty cranky (a nice polite term) that we de-regulate the banking industry under the guise that everyone should own their own home, 'home ownership after all is what make this country strong' (gag) and now we are bailing people out right and left and the final straw for this camel, we, the government, are taking over the main idiots in all this - oh wait, no, the main idiots are the bright boys who deregulated the banking industry, gee golly who are they related too. So much for that "small government" promise eh? Small where you want to be small. Oh, but lets not call this welfare! Okay I'm done (for now).

I have eaten Lutefisk. And I am still alive.

My grandma worked for Scoop Jackson. This same grandmother was raised in a soddy in South Dakota before her family permanently settled in the Okanogan Valley.

I have told my daughters that if they have a problem with their spouse they may come over for a cuppa sumpin, a Kleenex or two and then I will send them back before the sun goes down because God hates divorce and to rip a body in two is a very violent thing indeed. And woe to the man, or woman, who for what ever earthly reason willingly, knowingly participates in such violence.

We had a daylight basement, on the back side of our house the basement was half exposed. There was an exterior door from the basement on that side of the house and my folks always referred to the walled in area that served as the entryway as a bilcoe or maybe bilcole. But as usually I can not find that term anywhere in the universe. My folks had a lot of names for things no one else had.

I believe that it is possible (but not probable) for the spirit of a dead person to "visit" you, but that it is entirely wrong, wrong, wrong for a live person to "bug" a dead person.

I am positive that my father planted barberry bushes outside my brother's windows for a reason other than landscape effect. He should have planted them all around the house, and in my brothers' car and at my school and…..

What we call intuition God calls discernment and it is a gift He gives to us. To bad we don't listen better to it.

One more "political" thing, Sarah Palin will not be a "role model" for my daughters, there are very few women who are, unless they are mostly at home with their children, single and working selfishlessly for the Lord or abandoned single moms working and fighting for their children in a cold hearted world. So I have some friends who my daughters are pointed to and people like Mother Theresa or some saints in the past (catholic concept here but not necessarily canonized). People in politics rarely ever move to "role model" in my brain. But that doesn't mean I won't vote for them, even vote enthusiastically. Unfortunately for my children their very own mother doesn't constitute as a role model for them. They darn well better do a darn better job than I have, even recently. Even non-role models can do things for us and teach us things.

Dirt is on vacation and so I have one more hindrance to getting things done.

I am verbose but then that is obvious by the time you got here. So on that note I end.

Kathy I hope you learned five knew things - it is hard to do for someone I have known for almost twenty years.