Tagged by HSF October 28, 2007

I was tagged a few days ago by HSF to write 7 things about myself you may not know.  Assuming anyone besides my own children read this, here I go:

1.  I love Christmas music.  Not just during December, or even November and December, but all year long.  By the time January rolls around I’m getting tired of it, so I don’t listen to any until we get a cold, wet day in April or June or whenever, then i pull it out.  I get back into serious listening with the first really cold weather after Labor Day.  When I have to clean the kitchen or do dishes or whatever, it all goes by better if I’m listening to Christmas music.

2.  I love to sing, but I’m not very good at it.  When Piano Man and I were first married, he wanted to be in the ward choir so I went along.  I couldn’t sing high enough to be a soprano, but I didn’t know how to go about singing alto.  The very first practice was terrible for me, so afterwards we brought the music home to work on it.  I played the alto line and Piano Man sat with me until my voice could find the correct notes at the correct time.  After all these years I now know how to pick up the alto line by myself, but it takes some effort most of the time.  Piano Man is the ward choir director and my good friend and I are in the ward choir.  We are both alto’s and we always bring the music home and work on it together until we both know how we are supposed to sound.

3.  I want to be a chef when I grow up.  I love cooking and trying out new recipes, but I’m not very good at coming up with new ideas on my own.  But if I eat something at a restaurant, I can usually figure out how to make it at home.  I’m a Food Network junkie and love to try out those recipes.  I recently watched the “chefography” about Giada de Laurentis and she started out as a personal chef for a family.  I told Piano Man that I want to be a personal chef, and he pointed out that, oh yes, I already am…I forgot.  Problem is, NOBODY PAYS ME FOR IT!!!

4.  I wish I could design clothing.  I love sewing and choosing fabrics and patterns and threads and embellishments, but I would love to be able to create my own patterns.

5.  I have been blessed to have a best girl friend through all the phases of my life.  I met my first best friend, C, when I was 4 years old, and we are still friends and when we talk to each other a couple of times a year, it seems like no time has passed at all.  J came along when we were both in 7th grade, those hated junior high school years.  At our school they had a dance 3 times a year, during the last hour of the day.  Since it was still during school hours, we weren’t allowed to just go home.  So J and I would go into the bathroom, polish our glasses, shine up our braces, adjust our dresses (pants weren’t allowed in school in those days!), and go to the stinky gym, where we would stand against the wall for an hour, wondering why nobody was asking us to dance.  Hmmmm… Let’s see.  CL came along in high school and was amazingly talented in every way.  She eventually lined me up with Piano Man after I suffered a broken heart.  I’m thankful every day that she thought of lining me up with Piano Man.  When we moved to our first house in West Valley City, I met P.  Our boys were the same age, and we ended up having our oldest girls within 6 weeks of each other.  When we moved to our current home 18 years ago I met L and we have been laughing friends ever since.  I still stay in touch with all of these women after all these years and I can’t imagine my life without each one.

6.  I’m one of those girls who is married to her best friend.  I think a big reason we have a happy marriage after almost 30 years is that we honestly, truly like each other.  We enjoy spending time together and he makes me laugh every single day.  It’s great to married to someone you can be goofy with.

7.  HSF said that she loves the smell of Tide, and a comment from Loralee said that she likes smells, too.  Well, I’m with those girls.  I am a big-time sniffer, but not for getting high, I promise!  I just love to smell things, mostly chemicals!  Weird, I know.  I actually keep a can of pine sawdust in my pantry so I can sniff it when I miss my daddy.  I can’t walk past the shoe aisle at Walmart without stopping to sniff the shoe polish.  If I’m driving, I try to get behind diesel trucks and tar trucks.  And I took up decorative painting because I get to use varnish.  It’s hard for me to believe someone thought it was a good idea to invent odorless paint!  However, there are some smells I don’t like.  Living out in the country we experience many smells that I consider cucka.  Like when the manure truck drips all over the road…ick!  And when the breeze blows in from the blood pools at the local meat processing plant.  Ick again.  Apparently natural smells are not my favorites.  Give me some good chemicals any day!

I am tagging Fuffy.