Me-me-MeMmmme!

I have been so so very tired lately.  I loved the chance to visit with Gigi last weekend but the truth is I don't see my kids near enough as it is and after getting home at 1:30am Tuesday morning I dove right back into another week of work and I am EXHAUSTED.  I don't think it's a good sign when I'm hoping I have mononucleosis, just for an excuse to stay in bed.  And, yes, tomorrow I will have been back a week but it may as well have been just last night for all the unpacking I've done.  Blech.

Also, despite all the pretty flowers and baby bunnies and rebirth, I loathe the month of April....
Friday would have been Brennan's 8th birthday.

But any-whoodle, there was Fun this weekend, including a trip to the park and another cooking experiment gone hysterically disastrously wrong, so it's not all bleakness and misery around here.  Also, I was extremely flattered to be tagged not once but twice in the same circling meme, by Starrlife and Ellie's mom.  My very first meme!  I can now claim my bloggy credentials.  I'm particularly grateful for the timing since I could use a fun distraction this week.

There are Rules, posted below.  I'm supposed to tag 11 other people.   Umm, any takers?  Combined, Ellie's mom and Ms. Starr have already snatched up the obvious contenders (on the Ds-mommy circuit) and other people are busy growing babies or taking care of babies... or I'm not sure they'd be "meme" people (is there a type?).  This isn't technically breaking the rules (yet) since I will formally tag in the next post - this is only Part I (she wrote ominously).  You knew I couldn't been concise, right?  Please let me know if you need post material (Cate!).

Eleven Random Things:

I could list all my prior jobs and exhaust my list but that might be cheating so I'll just hit the highlights.  I was full of adventure back in the day - now I live in the suburbs and work in a cubicle.  whee.  It's not actually as disconcerting as it should be.

1.  I spent my senior year of high school in Germany and my first two years of college in Paris, here.   Sadly I have ZERO talent for languages and can speak neither German nor French.  Learning ASL with my girl is my only hope at being bilingual.

2.  After running out of money, I returned to CA and while finishing school spent two summers on a fishing tender out of Ketchikan, Alaska.  That probably warrants a whole post, huh?  I went up after seeing one of those "Earn $10k" ads in the college papers and wandered the docks looking for work only to find not that many women actually fished (I did meet some later).  So I talked myself into a job as a cook on a tender - the owner realized soon enough I was a lousy cook but I worked hard and by the second summer I'd been promoted to "deck boss" (a pleasantry - I supervised nothing and no one).  It was a good chunk of change for a college student and landed me more than one job interview later on.  It  took me years to start eating salmon again.

3.  After graduating and a couple of terrible gigs, I found myself doing basically the entry level version of what I'm doing now.  Except then I left and joined the LAPD.

Betcha you weren't expecting that, were you?  Proud member of the 6-98 class, right here.  And I graduated with top honors in academics and tactics.  (I'd explain why that isn't as impressive as it sounds but for now I'm just going to own it.)  I lasted 4 weeks in the field.  I knew about half way thru training it wasn't for me but damned if I was going to quit.  You know how they say no one in the nursing home ever regrets the things they did, only what they didn't do?  This was my thing.  I very briefly had abs of steel and I will never ever have to wonder about the path not chosen.

4.  Matt stood me up on our first date and then, after a very romantic second date, he kissed me... on the forehead.  He also doesn't read books or like Star Trek (*gasp*) and has this peculiar predisposition to lean right politically.  We've been together almost 16 years now.  Go figure.

5.  That second romantic date was on the same day my baby brother was born.  My dad remarried (twice, actually, but we don't discuss the Middle Wife) and has 5 kids - three over 33 and two under 18.

6.   With my sad little Bachelor of Arts and Parties, I am the least educated person in my immediate family.  I'm also the only one with a blog so HA! Guess who wins THAT contest?

(Don't answer that)

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I'm going to have to take short break because I just realized it's 1am and I prefaced this piece by complaining about how tired I was.  No wonder!

The rules, for the record:

1) Post these rules.
2) Post 11 random things about yourself.
3) Answer the questions set for you in the post of those who tagged you.
4) Create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
5) Go to their blog (or email them or tweet them) and tell the people you tagged that you’ve tagged them.
6) No stuff in the tagging section about “you are tagged if you are reading this.”   You legitimately have to tag 11 people.  [Noted!]