I've Been Tagged

My best friend "tagged" me and I am to tell you seven things about myself. I have never heard of blog tag, but I am new to this game. Since my blog is private and only open to those who know me fairly well, most of this may not come as a surprise, but here goes:

1. Long Spandex + Eminem = Happiness
I love to run. I've been a runner probably since elementary school when I would always be the only girl who actually chose to run the mile a second time because I wanted to see if I could improve my time. My favorite running outfit consists of shorts and long sleeves, used in about 50-60 degree weather. But my second favorite thing to wear while running are spandex! I admit it: I love spandex! I feel like a superhero in them. This morning, I was able to go outside for a rare run and took our Ipod. The song I listened to at least four times on the run? That's right: Eminem's "Lose Yourself." Now, I do not really like Eminem as a person and don't have a whole lot of respect for his music's messages, but you really can't listen to that song and not want to move. When I started running, I ran along to the beat and felt so fantastic, I actually started smiling. I'm sure I looked like a big idiot to anyone who happened to be looking out the window at me. But I was so happy to be outside, doing something good for my health, and feeling great about it. About 10 minutes into the run, though, I remembered that I'm actually in pretty poor running shape right now, a thought that occurred to me about the time I realized I was hyperventillating and had a cramp eating away at my side. But I tried my best to maintain my good attitude even though I was forced to slow down quite a bit.

2. I'm a good cook.
I considered writing, "I like to cook," but gosh darnit, I'm going to brag. I think I'm a pretty darn good cook. And I do LOVE to do it. I experiment a lot and don't always end up with gourmet meals, but I think I do pretty well. Few things excite me more than a really good meal. One of my most favorite things to do is put on some good music (something like Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra), pour myself a glass of wine, and cook a tasty meal. I love finding new recipes and making them my own somehow. Being home this year has allowed me to experiment more, which has been great. I'm not a big fan of baking because I always skip ingredients on accident, and do you know if you skip the baking powder, cakes don't turn out all that well? :) When you're cooking a meal, you can mix and match a little more.

3. I lost my fifth grade spelling bee when I misspelled sandal. You guessed it. I spelled it sandle. What an idiot! And now I'm an English teacher. I'll tell you, though, I've never misspelled it again.

4. I have an obsessive compulsive symetry disorder. Ask Will. If I get pinched on one arm, I will pinch my other arm in the same spot to even things out. I've been this way as long as I can remember and do not know where it came from. It's gotten to the point that I don't even notice and I will bang my one leg on the table or something and then Will will say, "Did you just bang your other leg on purpose?" Guilty. :(

5. Another embarrassing confession for an English teacher: I've never read a Jane Austen book.
My favorite movies include Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, yet I've never actually read any of the books. The one time I tried to read Sense and Sensibility, I couldn't help but think that I'd rather just watch Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet act it out. The fact of the matter is, it's stressful being an English teacher because everyone you tell your profession to acts as if you must have read every book on the planet. Have you ever been to Borders? There are a lot of books. And people keep writing more! I mean, how can we keep up?

6. I LOVE team sports.
I get irrationally excited when given the opportunity to play a team sport like volleyball, baseball, football, etc. Because the only sports I participated in in high school were cross country and track, which are ultimately individual sports, I love to play sports where everyone is forced to work together. In fact, I love team sports so much that I tried out for the basketball team 3 years in a row (7th, 8th, and 9th grade). I was cut three years in a row, too. If you ask me, I was robbed. Just ask my best friend, Sarah. While playing for her church basketball team one year, I scored 3 points out of the team's total of 7. That's close to 50% of the entire score, so you tell me I'm not good. Harumph.

7. I was on the first ever Crew team at Augustana College.
My friend, Justin List, decided that since Augie was situated along the mighty Mississippi river, it should surely have a Crew team. So he found us a coach, talked 8 of us into rowing, and the Augustana Crew team was born. These days, the team is huge and given a good amount of funding by the school. When we started the team back in 1999, we used a horribly old boat and got last place in almost all our races at our first regatta. We actually went to the Midwest Rowing Championships in Madison, WI, and my one big memory of that day was when the pace boat was yelling at us through their megaphone, "Augustana: Please return to your lane!" That was embarrassing. We probably figured it didn't matter since everyone was ahead of us anyway. Why did I continue to row, you ask? Well, because our uniforms were spandex, of course! How's that for coming full circle?

Hopefully, you learned something new about me or at least remembered something strange about me you had tried to forget. And those of you who only read this blog for Ethan stories and wonder why I just wasted a post on myself, here's the big news this week: Ethan got a tooth! It appeared on the 29th, a leap year tooth! I did my mother's "spoon test" of putting a metal spoon in his mouth and tapping to listen for the tap of a little tooth. I tried it in the morning and heard nothing. Then, around bath time, I thought I saw something poking through, so I tried the spoon test again. Sure enough, we heard the tap tap tap of a pearly white. Hooray. If I can ever get him to open his mouth for a picture, I will post one soon.

And the following is Ethan's Army Crawl video. It was actually filmed the day of the tooth appearance, though we did not know it at the time. I wanted to get video of his scooting before his scooting turned to crawling. It's terrible, but I always say he looks like a soldier, wounded in battle, trying to get himself to a safe place. He gets around pretty quickly these days. I've decided I can wait for him to crawl, and, consequently, walk, because when he does it means my days of being able to leave him alone in the basement for a few minutes are over. If Ethan is anything like I've heard his mischevious daddy was as a child, I am going to have to keep a close eye on him at all times.

(OK, so the video would not upload for some reason. So if you're reading this, you've come to the blog before I had a chance to try to upload the video again. Stay tuned...I'll get it going.)