Thursday, August 23, 2007

Eight things

Okay, I've been tagged twice now for that "Eight Interesting Things about You" meme, so I'll succumb:

1. I am a morning person.

2. I believe that (possibly) the best thing about being a grown-up is getting to eat whatever you want for breakfast.

3. I took a job with a traveling carnival for eight weeks at age 17.

4. I read six languages; speak three of those (including my native language) with some degree of proficiency.

5. I hate peanut butter. Always have.

6. I smoked for years, quit for years, took it up again in the wake of a bad man problem, but am kinda sorta trying to quit again now. Have cut back a great deal, anyway.

7. I prefer overcast or even drizzly days to sunny ones.

8. I believe that the best thing about living alone is being able to turn on the music and sing badly or dance like an idiot without worrying about anyone walking in on me.

2 comments:

hilary said...

Eight things about your eight things:

1. I knew that.

2. I agree.

3. I had forgotten.

4. I think you're amazing!

5. I did not know that.

6. I'm proud of you! Keep it up. As you know, no man is worth lung cancer.

7. I think it's because of growing up in Home City. I'm with you on this one.

8. I miss living alone sometimes. *sigh*

Anonymous said...

Encourage encourage encourage. I smoked for 37 years, quit by tapering off (and eating many, many Fancy Fruits LifeSavers). Nine and a half years later--October 2003--I had some moderate chest pain and yup, Stage 3 non-small-cell lung cancer.

Believe me, you do not want to have to turn to the person who loves you, mumbling "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" after the doc looks at your x-rays and gives you the news. That was the absolute, no-contest worst thing that ever happened to me--the remorse, not the diagnosis itself. This happens, one way or another, to everyone who doesn't live a life of steely isolation like Ted Kaczynski. But the self-reproach was a lot keener for knowing I had caused this--that I was (as I thought) going to leave Peggy a widow at 58. I didn't, thanks to a combination of brilliant medical care and Peggy's rock-solid emotional support and unimaginably good luck; that's not a Trifecta I'd recommend counting on. The Gentleman in the Bright Nightie (as I think W.C. Fields put it) is coming for us all, but we needn't put out the welcome mat.