Link: Beyond the Horizon: Playing Tag with Others: Part Two.
Midge Frazel felt appropriately sorry for me after I whined about not being tagged in this edublogger 5 things meme and I now can officially play. :)
By the way, Midge's web site is fabulous and one of my first finds when I entered the ed tech world several years ago.
Here I go...
Five Things You Probably Don't Know About Me
1) I've mentioned my camping experiences in this blog before, but I don't think I mentioned the fact that I was runner up Rodeo Queen one summer. That's the closest I ever became to any sort of childhood royalty! Every Sunday, we had a rodeo in which we competed in various gymkhana activities. This is one of my earliest memories of feeling competitive. I also branded calves during my last summer at this ranch camp and honed my trail cooking skills. There's nothing like fried spam over a campfire. :)
2) I am related to the person responsible for catching the U-505 submarine currently housed in the Museum of Science and Industry. Daniel Gallery was a first cousin of my grandfather. Because of these family Navy connections, my grandfather pulled strings and joined the Navy during World War II when he was technically too old to do so.
Strangely enough, my husband has a picture of HIS father with Daniel Gallery's priest brother, John Ireland, at some World War I vet event. This was taken long before Peter and I met, and I actually never met my father in law as he passed away when Peter was in college.
3) My father was a high school music teacher, and for the first song at my wedding, Fly Me to the Moon, he played his saxophone with the fabulous band that we hired. He secretly practiced with the band beforehand and it was especially touching because I really never saw him play instruments outside of his classroom context.
4) The year I met my husband was something out of Four Weddings and A Funeral. I was a bridesmaid in the spring for my oldest grade school friend, and that same weekend, my beloved grandmother had a debilitating stroke. She hung on for several months but could not walk or talk again. She was well cared for at home.
In July, my oldest friend from college was married and she handed me her bouquet, not bothering to throwing it, and told me I was the next to get married. I thought she was completely bonkers because I wasn't even dating anyone.
In November that year, I was a bridesmaid at my cousin's wedding and I found out the night of the rehearsal dinner that my grandmother had died. I went through with the wedding celebrations, and actually met my husband at this wedding. A few weeks later, he came to my grandmother's memorial service, and I knew he was special. All my mother's friends wanted to meet the "boy". He was the hit of the funeral! So, I feel that my grandmother somehow found someone to take her place in my life... when she left me in this world, Peter stepped in to be my mainstay. The rest is history!
5) My mother is manic depressive and generally more depressed than manic. This is something I don't dwell on much these days as I've learned that there is only so much in life that I can actually control. But, to make a long, sorry story short, my mother was diagnosed with this mental illness while I was in high school and it's been a downhill battlle for her ever since. She went from being this vivacious, creative, brilliant person to a shadow of herself. Everything has been tried on her, and I don't know what the right course of treatment should have been. I've tried to step in and help as I am her only child and she has no siblings, but she hasn't always wanted this. She's sort of happy just existing. Anyway, I hope to make sense of her story at some point, either by writing about it or making a homemade movie, but I think it's going to take years to process this complicated situation!
I'm done.... next, I am tagging my fellow Infinite Thinking Machine bloggers:
Lucie Steve Tom Chris Mark Julie Wes, tell us 5 things we don't know about YOU!
P.S - Is there a specific tag we're supposed to use with this?
