Tax Dodge

I'd love to boast that my blog is now "award winning," but the truth is that KatieZ over at Thyme for Cooking just sends me these awards because she knows that I'm such a nerd that I get a kick out of filling out memes. As Katie says, the rules (there are always rules) are simple: Tell seven things about yourself and then pass the award on to other beautiful bloggers. Having just tagged a bunch of my favorite bloggers, recently, I plan to find some additional folks to send this along to.

Here are the seven things about me that you may not have known and that may amuse, while you are taking a break from filling out your tax forms:

1. When we lived in Maryland, I had a pet box turtle as a child and kept it for perhaps a week. It was a marvelous creature, perhaps 8" long with a beautiful, high arched, hinged shell patterned in black and bright yellow. It lived in the screened porch, when I wasn't putting it in the bathtub for a swim, and it ate lettuce. My mother could see that a diet of iceberg lettuce wasn't going to sustain life for any creature so she made me let it go. We released it at the edge of the woods where I had collected it and watched it aim immediately for some low-hanging blackberries that were growing wild at the edge of the woods and begin wolfing them down. Even a stubborn six year old could see that this poor turtle was much happier in his own environment.

2. I found another box turtle about 20 years later - it was trying to cross a freeway in Virginia where several other box turtles had failed to make it to the other side. Sadly, it was like a real-life game of Frogger, only with turtles so slow that one couldn't imagine how drivers could miss them. Anyway, this turtle was on the verge of the highway, about to try his luck, when I made then-husband stop the car so I could rescue him. As we were on our way to visit my sister and her family, I kept the turtle to give to my nephew, who was then about four years old. He was both thrilled and terrified of this gift but we had fun exploring the turtle before releasing it near a woods on his father's peanut farm. I still have the snapshot of him and me with the turtle.

3. Growing up in the Navy, we had cats as pets rather than dogs. Cats are easier to transport. All our cats for a long time were named Sam. The original Sam was an intact male who loved my Dad and tolerated the rest of us; Dad would let Sam out at night and who knows how many kittens he sired. He always returned at dawn and slunk into the linen closet where he slept for the rest of the day. When Dad was at sea, Sam would bring presents of dead mice and lay them gently on Dad's pillow. Mom did not appreciate this aspect of Sam's devotion.

4. I have climbed Mount Fuji, all the way to the top, and watched the sun rise from there. It is one of my proudest achievements.

5. I was an indifferent student as a young woman and only finished two years of college before leaving gratefully for the working world. I returned to school after three pleasant but dead-end jobs and was a stellar student at age 35, earning my Bachelor's in Biology and my Master's in Higher Education Administration in short order. It was a wonderful experience and a good investment in satisfying work.

6. I can't dance. I love music and enjoy dancing - just can't do it at all well. No sense of rhythm and my feet don't have noticeable connection to my brain.

7. When I was in boarding school in France at age 16, we used to sneak out at night and meet boys. We made plans for these assignations at our Sunday beach outings. I suppose all kinds of dire things might have resulted, from rape to (worse) discovery by Mme. Blay, the feared headmistress of the school, but nothing did. We walked around the town, thrilled by our guilty freedom, and then went back, climbed back up the shutters we had shinnied down a few hours before, and went to sleep.

Now, wasn't that better than doing your taxes? Off to tag some other Beautiful Bloggers!