Happy to Share!

Many warm thanks to Ashley at Chaos Diaries for nominating me for the Kreativ Blogger award. This is quite an honor, especially coming from someone as eloquent as she is. I have, until very recently, been in a bit of a blogging slump. I keep hearing this from so many other bloggers, and in my case, at least, I have Facebook to blame. I figure that if I already posted about it on FB, what’s the point of blogging about it? I think I assume that most of my blog readers are also friends on FB, but I can’t be certain. So I’m often challenged to come up with new and more interesting, or creative things to write about, still staying mainly on the path of topics about my daughter, although I certainly don’t mind straying a bit just to be a rebel. A few posts ago, I mentioned how happy I was to be finally inspired by an outside source, Crazy Hip Bloggers. The post before that, I was lamenting the lack of time in my life. Lack of inspiration + no time = SLUMP. Surprise! I now feel that I have been doubly-challenged to get things in gear.

One of the rules in accepting the Kreativ Blogger award is to list 7 things that people might not know about me. I was thinking about that this morning on my way to work, and had to keep reminding myself this is 7 things people might not know, NOT 7 secrets people don’t need to know! Hahaha. I don’t think I could possibly think of 7 secrets anyway. 2 or 3, maybe…Then I had to keep reminding myself that my readers are not my family (well, not all of them are), and what I assume people already know about me, they probably don’t, so this may not be quite as difficult to come up with as I’d originally thought.

1) I kept a diary from the time I was 7 pretty much until I got married, at 23. I remember the very first diary I bought, a little blue book with flowers on the cover, and gold-edged pages. Sadly, that one book, of all the books I kept over the years, has gone missing. It chronicled my crushes on Shawn Cassidy and Donny Osmond, and how mad I was at my parents for not being allowed to do whatever it was I was not allowed to do on any particular day. That volume was followed up by a Hello Kitty diary with a little gold key. I always tell myself I want to re-read all of them, then scan or type them into electronic form, but there’s never a day rainy enough to start it. The teen angst years are a particularly riveting read, and I feel that knot in my stomach all over again whenever I look at them.

2) I was an only child until I was 21 (and already moved out of the house), when my baby brother, Josh, was born & adopted. I think this accounts for my love of reading, writing and art. What else is a little kid going to do when there’s no one else to play with? I sure hope it all rubs off on Samantha…

3) I played classical piano from the time I was 6. I stopped when I went away to college and while I wasn’t bad, I now can’t bring myself to play much because I think it all sounds terrible. That’s what I get for letting 23 years go by without any additional practice or training.

4) I have a serious and incurable addiction to ice cream. Pretty much any kind. (Woooo, that was scandalous! Oh, wait, things people might not know, not secrets…)

5) I have lived in Okinawa, Germany and London. Amazing experiences, all of them.

6) I swore off organized religion when I was 13 and living in Okinawa. I had been raised Jewish, but the only English-speaking school that was close to where we lived (we were not on a base) was run by fundamentalist Christian missionaries. I was truly scarred for life. I still have an incredible appreciation for religion for people that want or need it and for religious art (my favorite), but just choose to do my own thing. And I have nothing against the missionaries that taught me there, I just was at an age where things were particularly confusing and hard to sort through.

7) Steve and I eloped in England after knowing each other for just over a year, 7 months of which were long-distance.

Well, I hope that satisfied your curiosity. I know you were just dying to know those things.

Okay, so here are the official rules to accepting the Kreativ Blogger award:
1) Thank the person giving the award - Check...
2) Copy the award to your blog - Check...
3) Place a link to their blog - Check...
4) Name 7 things people don’t know about you - Check...
5) Nominate 7 bloggers - Keep reading...
6) Place a link to those bloggers - Keep reading...
7) Leave a comment letting those bloggers know about the award - Oh, that'll have to wait until tomorrow. My bed is calling me...

Here are the 7 nominated bloggers, whose blogs I enjoy reading regularly and who make me think. :-)

Amber at Tales of the Baker Bunch
Dawn at An Unexpected Trip to Holland
Sun at How to be a Zombie in Two Easy Steps
CJ at Don't Lick the Ferrets
Monica at Monkey Musings
Linda at Lila's Miracle Life
Michelle at Big Blueberry Eyes