The longest game of tag I've ever played.

So really, I've been needing an extra push to get anything done lately. I haven't been crafting, or listing things in either of my etsy shops. Yesterday when we got back from swimming with the beautiful Kristen (where I jumped off the edge of the pool into 8 feet of water, a huge step of bravery for me), I discovered that I had made sales in both shops, HeyLady, and ChristopherAndTia. That was just the push I needed to get my creative paper-crafting gears in motion. This morning when I went into the kitchen to unload the dishwasher, I saw that Christopher had already done it. Rather than going back into the living room and taking a nap while Eleanore watched Dora (which is what I really wanted to do), I decided it was finally time to scrub Eleanore's artistic crayon drawings off of the walls, and Windex the windows so that they might actually be used for looking outside. Christopher leaving me with nothing else to do, pushed me in the direction of the magic eraser and paper towels. And finally, as I mentioned in a comment that I left in Diana's blog (a muted palette), I've been pushed to blog. A few things have come to mind in the past couple of days, but there haven't been any real visions of the kind of typing wisdom/sarcasm that I prefer. Well now that I've been tagged, its like I've been given a homework assignment to blog, which means my writing will turn out less than original, but will be so much easier than trying to think of something clever to say, when really all I want to do, is lay on a giant shark shaped floaty in the middle of a crystal clear pool in the 100 degree sunshine, and fall asleep thinking about kittens and rainbows.

OK... so how does this tagging thing work exactly? I'm supposed to write about "seven random irrelevant facts", and then pass on the assignment to 7 other bloggers who may or may not be in need of something to blog about. Well, because I'm both dehydrated and sleep deprived, I'm going to list my 7 facts alright, but they're going to be a warped version of whatever it is that Diana wrote about. For her number one, she wrote about how she hates seafood. I'm going to try to do this in a word association kind of way. Lets see what I can come up with...

Seven random irrelevant facts:

1) Christopher and I got married on the Oregon Coast. It was kind of a Goonies themed wedding, in a non-decorated sort of way. We stood barefoot on the sand in Seaside, surrounded by close friends and family. Whoever could attend on such short notice really. After the ceremony, at which I began crying like a baby as soon as Kim, the lady that married us, started talking, we all headed to Dooger's, a seafood restaurant down the street. My dad had payed for our dinner that night. I ordered the smoked salmon alfredo. It was the best pasta of my life. That night we put our leftover wedding cake and my leftover pasta into our mini hotel room fridge, only to find out a few hours later that fridge was not turned on. The woman who had switched our rooms from a basic room to an oceanfront suite, had forgotten to turn it on. Me, being 4 months pregnant, I cried hysterically at the thought of my smoked salmon alfredo that my daddy had bought for me, being gone forever. We went the next night and ordered more. And, because I had cried so hard, we had got that night of hotel stay for free.

2) When I was in the second grade, my teacher was constantly having everyone in my class write stories. The pages would be lined at the bottom for our words, and there were large blank areas for our illustrations. We were supposed to include so many vocabulary words, and have so many pages. The covers that we made were then laminated, and the books bound together. I've got about 100 of these books up in my parents attic. One day I dug them out, only to discover that every single story I wrote was more or less the same. "The fox baby fell and broke its arm, but then it was OK, it grew up and had babies, and they died, but the fox ate a sandwich. The end". ...Or, "The princess was in a coma, with a broken leg. When she woke up, her parents were dead. But then she had a baby, and they ate cake. The end". My mom watched too many soap operas.

3) Anyone that has died on my Dad's side of the family, is at rest in a crypt in Hayward California. My Grandparents are right next to each other. My Uncle around the corner from them. My Great Grandmother across from him. I haven't been there since my Grandpa died when I was 15. Its all very emotional and creepy. But I'd like to be buried there too.

4) I had never seen an episode of Seinfeld until Christopher and I moved in together. And even then, I refused to watch it. I managed to avoid viewing an entire episode until a few months ago, when I had lost the remote, and was far too tired to get up off the couch and change the channel. Christopher wasn't even here. I'm still not a fan.

5) Ghosts, ghosts everywhere. Shortly after my grandmother died, my Aunt found out she was pregnant, after having IVF. The night she went into labor, I was staying at my Grandmothers old house. I had an unexplained urge to look up, and over at a stack of storage containers in the corner of the bedroom. After looking at it for a few seconds, the stack fell over. I immediately got up, turned the light off, and dove under the covers, not to emerge until daylight. That was just the beginning. A few years later I was on the computer at my parents house, very late at night, maybe 3am. Out of nowhere, I got smacked in the head. So hard that I could hear it. I didn't even bother turning the computer off, just ran straight downstairs to my creepy basement bedroom, and threw the blankets over my head. Later on my ghost encounters started to become less scary, and more exciting. One of the more recent ones, was when Eleanore was a few months old. I was pumping breast milk in the bedroom. Christopher was just leaving the room, and as if it had to fly around him, a brightly colored orb came shooting down the hall, and hit me in the chest so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I started screaming for Christopher to "get it off!!". I couldn't move my arms, because they were supporting my pumps, and I was not about to waste that milk that I had been working so hard to make. He came over to a frantic version of me, and kept saying he didn't see anything, and asking "get what off?!". I handed him my pumps, ran into the bathroom, and examined myself. Nothing had fallen off of me when I stood up. There were no marks on my body. I had Christopher search every inch of the room for a possible anything, that could have been what hit me. Nothing. I could on and on, but I'm starting to creep myself out.

6) When we lived in our last apartment, I would always have overactive imagination type visions of Aliens swooping down from the sky, and attacking the Air Force Base, which you could see from our 2nd story balcony. One night while I was in bed, I saw a bright neon light shoot across the sky. It was so fast, and so bright, that I thought for sure it was aliens, and started crying hysterically, thinking that we were going to die. The next day I googled it, only to find out that it was probably a meteor. But still, I constantly think about an Alien invasion, Independence-Day-Will-Smith style.

7) My almost two year old daughter points to pictures of Bettie Page on my bathroom wall, and says "Mama!". Aww, good baby.

Thanks Diana. These fingers sure needed some typing.

And now I have to tag 7 other bloggers, who may or may not be thankful for the writing assignment. If you decide not to participate, no feelings will be hurt :) So, that being said, I choose...

*BeckyKay.

*ThisOldHenHouse.

*Michele Maule.

*MelissaKate.

*Ishi.

*My sister in law.

*Kathy Smash!

I'm going to assume that you all know how to play. Don't forgot to tag 7 other bloggers.

From top to bottom:

-"CrayonFawn-red, burgandy, light pink, magenta, lavender", by CrayonFawn, $35.00.

-Christopher and I right after our wedding in Seaside Oregon.

-"Two Cute Ghost Corpse Skull couple", by lovelydiy, $15.00.
-"Haunted by Lucielle - PRINT 5 x 7 by Bee Joynes", by Witchetty, $7.00
-"Echo8 Space Shuttle Sighting number 005ST - 8x8 TTV Photograph", by echo8, $15.00.