Play with your food…

But when you’re done, eat your instruments. A soup seems appropriate somehow.

The kids are dying to try making recorders and slide whistles from carrots!

Warning this video is a 10 on the gross-o-meter. Just could NOT believe it when I saw the clip on Rocketboom today. I think I may be scarred for life.

Dorothea, if you are reading this blog, please do not click the link. I beg you.

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous! You drink everyone under the table.

HT: Mary Ellen

Off the old block.

Reading already!

…and knitting! It seems he feels the same exhilaration I do when presented with a basketful of delicious fibres!

Alright… If Mary Ellen is gonna do it, I will to. I just wish we could put all our Meezes together in that coffee shop. Could tear a hole in the universe, especially if the Meez people could let us put all our little ones into the picture!

I haven’t been this size since before babies, but I am LOVING the Burberry skirt and cute pumps. It should have little smudges all over it, and my hair is really too neat for reality. And I have make-up on here, which rarely happens. But, hey, this is fantasy-land.

Oh my gosh! It seems I am an international woman of mystery. inquiring minds want to know. I was tagged three times for this meme, (here, here, and here) so I guess I’d better get on with it then!

I’m supposed to tell you 8 facts about myself that you didn’t already know… Hmmm… Where to begin??

1. I don’t love feet. Feet squick me out reallllly badly. Except baby feet for some inexplicable reason. I’m getting better, I don’t actually gag at the site of them anymore. (I just KNOW I’m going to get foot pictures now.)

2. Mucous really, really grosses me out. I can clean muddy babies, I can catch vomit in my bare hands all to save the new comforter, but I can’t handle… well… snot. Blehk!

3. I used to be a dancer. Really, truly. I was supposed to have gone to New York the summer I turned 16, but I had a horror of being locked up in a studio day after day, growing paler and paler… I did, as an adult, take Irish step dancing classes from a man who rejoiced in the name of Colm O’Maoileidigh (pronounced O’Milady). He loved me because I could not stop counting at seven. Year of classical dance training had taught me to count eight. Made for some pretty comical dancing I can tell you. We decided I needed a t-shirt that had an “8″ circled and lined out.

4. I wanted very badly to be a nun. I really thought I might have a calling to religious life as a young woman (after I quit dancing - can you imagine??). It was not to be. God found a vocation much better suited to me. Would have been pretty difficult to mother 6 children as a nun. And now we are studying for my husband’s ordination to the diaconate, I can have the very best of both.

Half way there…

5. I’m terrified of heights, but I love to fly. It’s the heights where *I* am responsible for getting myself up that bother me - stairs, ladders. I once copped out of a view from the top of a lighthouse (on my honeymoon) because I was terrified. My husband is determined to make me grow out of it and has taken me to the top of Gateway Arch in St. Louis and up to the second level of the Eiffel Tower (God is good - the top level was closed that day!). But I’d love to earn my pilot’s license.

6. I graduated a year early from high school. I had a lot of extra credits from my 2 terms at a Catholic high school, which made me eligible. However, I failed my senior English class, despite getting the highest grade on my senior exam (even higher than our class valedictorian!) all because I didn’t study my vocab! That, and Mr. Pavini marked off for everything - but I’m not bitter.

7. I never went to college. Well, I tried taking a couple of classes once at the community college. It was the first time I ever experienced ‘test anxiety’. I had never heard of it and thought that I was having some kind of stroke or something. I mean, the material that I studied so hard and knew inside out and backwards just VANISHED as soon as I saw the exam paper. I walked out and never went back.

Last one…

8. I was born Nissa Fay (never liked my middle name as a child). My parents divorced when I was about 7 or 8. My mother remarried and I was adopted at age 12. My name was changed (at my request, but who in their right mind allows a kid to do that?) to Sydney Marlene. It never really stuck. Family always continued to call me Nissa. Friends at school called me “Syd”. So when I was 18 years old, I petitioned the court to change my name back to my birth name. So if you hear me answer to someone calling me “Syd” you’ll know why. I don’t love it, but I’ll answer to it.

So there it is. Or there they are… Eight facts you probably didn’t know about me. There are more, but let’s save those for another day. After all, we’re going to be friends for a long time and we need to leave a little mystery in our relationship.

If you are reading this, then consider yourself tagged. Just leave a comment with a link to your “8 Things”. Please, I don’t want to feel weird all by myself.