I've been tagged!

JoWynn has tagged me to do a meme. There are five questions.

What was I doing 10 years ago?
Ten years ago I was sitting by the side of the road leading to the elementary school, crying. I had been pulled over by a cop for speeding (he told me he had trouble keeping up with me to pull me over). I was racing to the elementary school for some picnic-on-the-lawn-with-your-child sort of thing and I was running late. My house was up for sale with an open house looming that weekend. The open house was in a few days and the painter failed to show up to finish the job he had started the week before. I was tired, spread thin and totally stressed out. We had already made an offer (along with 5 other people) on a new house and needed to sell ours quickly to get in. The officer asked me why was I crying, he wasn't going to hurt me? I told him between sobs about my stressed out housing situation and the no-show painter. Meanwhile, every other parent that was going to the school drove by me & saw me in this embarrassing situation. This cop talked to me for 20-30 minutes. Where was my house, he asked. How old were my kids? What were their names? Where was the new house? Where was I going in such a hurry? blah blah blah from him and sob sob sob from me. Finally, when he saw my Driver's License, he mentioned that we had the same birthday. And, after all that, he didn't give me a ticket! Then I had to go to the picnic and pretend everything was OK, because I didn't want to tell my daughter what a bad example I was setting and tell her I got pulled over for speeding! Not my best day! We DID get the house, and have lived happily ever after... ha ha.


Five things on my To Do list today:
1. Finish reading "I Feel Bad About My Neck" by Nora Ephron - too funny!
2. Stitch!!!
3. Baby my baby (cat - see below)
4. Go out to dinner (yay! no cooking!)
5. Baby the plants out back that need extra care - the Angel's Trumpet has its first bloom!

Snacks that I enjoy
Dark Dark Dark Chocolate!
Kettle Corn (sweet popcorn)
Cereal - like Kashi's Lean Crunch - I could eat 3 bowls a day of that stuff!

Things I would do if I were a billionaire...
Hmmm, strangely enough this is a hard one. I've known people who have had a lot of money and this kind of screwed up their priorities. Instead of putting themselves into things(like raising kids, or dealing with a problem), they just sort of throw money at them. I would like to travel to go take classes in things having to do with embroidery (the Lesage in France!) I would like to make some improvements to my house - I love to have people over and would like a better kitchen. This may sound weird, but I think I would go to therapy with my husband, not because we have some great huge problem, but we used to know a therapist who was really wonderful at ways to work on relationships - keeping them fresh, trying new ways to be close, discovering new things about you & your spouse, etc. And because I just went to a meeting at our church to decide to what charities to donate our funds for this year, I couldn't ignore some of the wonderful programs to help others, especially women and children. I think having lots of money would change my attitude more than my life. I would just feel more hopeful sometimes, like when I find termites in the window ledge, or I'm bummed at discovering one of the millions of things that can go wrong with your home. I'm sure I would buy more "stuff" for stitching, but I will do that anyway....

Now for the list of places I've lived.
I was born in Del Rio, Texas. Too young to acquire much of an accent. Completely obscured by a 10 gallon hat.

Moved to Japan! (I wish I had been born there - I always joke that I would have looked different if I had) I had a nanny there who loved me so much (as a 2 year old) that she often took me home with her on her time off. My mom bought a lot of furniture in Japan, so an Asian living room is very "homey" to me.

Grew up in Columbus Ohio, where I thought that a 30 thousand dollar house would take my parents one year to pay off, since my step-father made 30 thousand dollars a year!

Now living in Southern California, where I was blessed to meet my husband.


Now it's my turn to tag a few a few of my favorite bloggers...how about

Marty52

Nellie

Lauri

Pat Winter

Sara