Like a warm "welcome back!"

So, Easter--and, more to the point, the end of Lent--was a while back now, but life has been so full that I have not yet gotten back into the blogging groove. This is not a bad thing, at all, on either count! I would rather be out doing life with my family than just sitting here blogging about the life I would like to be living. ; ) But yet, writing--as Sunny so eloguently demonstrated in my last post--is cathardic, and is an excellent mental exercise. And let's just say my flabby brain needs all the exercise it can get these days! Yes, the days have been full and so I am more tired at the end of them, but recently I have been foggy-headed even in the middle of the day. . . Do I need more sleep? Probably. Am I eating well? No, not really. Clearly I might want to amend some of the brain-draining ways I am living these days. . .

ANYWAY since I have not had the mental energy to write much, I have spent my computer time recently reading blogs--namely going back and catching up on what my favorite bloggers had written while I was abstaining from blogs during Lent. And as I read back to just before Lent in two of the blogs I "follow," Moderate Means and Zero House Payment Forever, I was shocked to see that both of those bloggers had "nominated" me for two more blogging "awards"! So sweet of them! I was touched. . . and then I panicked. Oh, no--they posted about this so long ago, do they think I don't CARE?! So, Stacy and Nydia, I hope both of you remembered that I was off the radar for a while. Now that I know, I thoroughly appreciate your kind gestures!

(Um, if anyone else has written anything else you want me to see anytime soon, would you please let me know? Otherwise it might take me a while to find it!)

So according to Stacy, for this first one, I am supposed to tell you 10 things about myself that you don't know (Mom, my sister Rebecca, and maybe Susan excepted ; ).

Piece of cake! (i.e. very little mental thought required ; )

1. My eyes are hazel, which means they are a mixture of blue and brown and look green in some lights

2. We are mostly vegetarian--more "flexitarian"--yet I am allergic to most raw fruits, vegetable and nuts. Wait, have I told you that before? Ok, then my favorite category of vegetarian food to cook is Middle Eastern. But my favorite vegetarian food to eat is Ethiopian.


3. My favorite actor (in the can't take my eyes off of him category) has always been Aidan Quinn. OK, ok, he's aging like the rest of us, but still. . . dreamy. (If I were not embarassed about drooling over a man much younger than me, I would have said Orlando Bloom. Esp. as Legolas in LOTR. Mmmmm.)
4. Speaking of which, if Smiley had been a girl, he very well might have been named Arwen. (All our kids have Welsh names, to compliment my husband's surname.)

5. My favorite flavors of ice cream: peanut butter and chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, licorice, anything minty, anything flavored like liquors or coffee (Jack Daniel's whiskey raisin--only available in the town where JD is brewed; Baskin Robbins' Kalua-carmel-praline; frappaccino chip)

6. which is interesting because I don't at all like to drink coffee or anything alcoholic except champagne, but any dessert with those flavors I love.

7. I live by the ocean, but my heart is in the mountains. Around Crested Butte, Colorado to be specific. 8. I have mentioned my absolute favorite flower is wild chicory, but my next favorite flower is blue hydrangea. Which means whenever the local nursery has a sale I can't resist buying one and planting it in my garden, where the blooms promptly turn to pink. (I know I need to amend the soil, and will once I figure out what it needs. . . someday. In the meantime my pink hydrangeas make me happy too)(I said this would be a piece of cake, but have already resorted to asking my husband for ideas. Sheesh)

9. I love 80's pop/rock. Esp. when house cleaning. Give me Rosanna or Walking on Sunshine or Right on Track" or Freedom (or Funkytown or When the Heart Rules the Mind) and a dust cloth and I'm good to go.

Believe me, I showed a lot of restraint just now limiting that list to six. Youtube and 80's videos are a dangerous mix.

10. Back to Tolkien--I don't remember when I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but I do remember reading them back to back at least 4 times in 6th grade. I would mix it up for fun--this time I'll read all the Sam and Frodo parts first, then go back and read the other threads. Those are some of the best stories ever written.

So now we're at ten. . . but we're just getting started! Because now I am supposed to tell you 7 more things about me, for this award:

(And now DH is not being as helpful with the ideas, suggesting that I tell you I love to exercise, which he knows full well would be lying. Thanks, hon!)

11. I love good pastry, but will probably not eat it if I don't have a cup of tea with milk to accompany it.

12. My favorite colors are grey and green. Just not necessarily togther.

13. For a loooooong time I have wanted to adopt from Haiti. DH does not (yet) have the same desire, and it has been moot because we have never had the means. . . but I must say that when I saw the photos of Haiti after the earthquake, I really, really, really wanted to go over there and bring home a couple of kids.

14. Someday I would really like to tour castles in Europe with my DH.

15. Someday I want to quilt. (And if I lived closer to you, Mom, maybe I would be by now!)

16. I love to make art, esp. watercolor and handbuilt pottery, but don't have an outlet for it, and was surprised when I started homeschooling by how much fun it was doing some of the art assignments I came up with for them. Two years back I made the most awesome tactile picture of a raven out of black wild rice, tiny black lentils, and other grains and legumes. It took me several hours after the kids were in bed, meticuously lining up the grains just right, and I got so much satisfaction when it was done. I was proud of myself! And then I realized, well, who could I share it with besides my immediate family? So, a couple of days later, it went into the trash. That made me sad, but what else to do? Now I wish I had at least taken a photo of it!

17. For my Master's of Humanities project, I adapted Alice Walker's novel "The Temple of My Familiar" into a screenplay. It was over 200 pages. (And you might not know that one page of script is approximately one minute of film. So let's just say the screenplay needs a little editing. But I secretly dream of it being a movie someday. . . )

18. I miss my Grandma Lager, my mom's mom. She died about 10 years ago, but she and I had only started to know each other as people, if you know what I mean, and I think we were becoming friends. It makes me sad that she never got to meet any of my kids.

19. I love the smell of garlic.

20. I always wanted a nickname. Ever since I was a little kid. But I guess I was not the kind of kid who inspires others to give her a nickname (since it does not count if you give yourself the nickname, it has to come from your family or friends). The closest I came to a real nickname was being affectionately called "Er" by a boyfriend in college. Long story, not worth explaining, but I had so longed for a nickname that I even liked "Er." So one reason why I love this blog is because I finally have a "nickname" that I love, that did not come from me, technically. It came from God. I love being known as Blessed.

(And just in case I haven't mentioned it before, that's BLESS-ed, not BLESSD. The first feels so much better in the mouth and sounds so much better in the ear ; )

Stacy, I don't know what comment I left that encouraged you on a rough homeschool day, but I am glad it did! Nydia, thank you for sharing the photo of your kids with me--they are adorable! I wish both of you a prosperous year of laughter, family joy, and lots of blogging.