Six things people don't know about me

My friend, Shell tagged me for a meme. She wants me to write down 6 things people don't know about me. Yeah, right Shell, there's a reason they don't know certain things about me, I want those things kept under wraps.

Let me see if I can come up with 6 things that won't embarrass me too badly.

1. Like Shell, I have very dexterous toes. I hardly ever bend down to pick up things if I am barefoot, I just use my toes.

2. I was well into my 30's before I finally accepted that I was not adopted into my family. I just did not understand how genetics could have made me so different on every level (emotional, intellectual, inner drive, self discipline, self awareness etc) from every member of my family.

3. I LOVE the sound of the voices of old, black Southern men who smoked a lot. I can sit for hours listening to their deep, gravelly voices. When I was pregnant I used to go to the local iHop every Friday morning and sit in a booth next to these old retirees who met there every week so that I could just let their gorgeous voices wash over me.

4. It appears that I am going over to the dark side. After years of being slightly disdainful of the excesses of pet owners, I find myself wearing puppies in slings and rushing through errands because i worry about the puppies being in their crate for longer than 90 min. I have just spent a week sitting on the kitchen floor playing with puppies and getting up every few hours though the night to take them potty. How are the mighty fallen?

5. I am one of those very rare people who truly does not care what people think of her. I figure there are so many people in the world that there are always going to be people who dislike you and people who like you. it's not worth the effort to try to change people's perceptions of you. Enjoy basking in the glow of the people who like you and ignore the rest.

6. I am not just anti Obama's candidacy, I am terrified of it. I find the parallels to Hitler's rise to power frightening in the extreme. Look at this salute:

It makes every rational hair on my body stand up in horror. Cults revolt and scare me. The cult of the politician even more so.

So there you have it, 6 things that I think people didn't know about me.

I tag Lynne, Lydia, Makita, Michelle and Steph.

How do you describe yourself

Michelle at The Beartwinmom's Den tagged me with a meme this afternoon.

• Write a six-word memoir.


• Post it to your blog including a visual illustration if you would like.


• Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogsphere.


• Tag 5 more blogs with links


• Don’t forget to leave a comment in the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

Unlike Michelle, I did not have several swimming around in my head. I find it hard to define myself in words, it depends on the day, time and situation. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a defining characteristic of mine is that I am a loner. I enjoy people, but in small doses. If you give me the option of an afternoon with people or of one with myself, I'll choose me, every time. The internet is a boon for loners like me. I get to interact with many, many people, but on my terms.

Here is my 6 word memoir:

"Party of one, leave me alone."



I've stolen part of it from Anneli Rufus. She wrote the book, "Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto".

She writes on her webpage:

My book Party of One is about our subculture - the subculture that will never, by nature, join hands and whose voices will never, by nature, form a chorus. Some loners are neuroscientists and some are office cleaners. Some are sculptors and some are Survivor fans. Some are law students and some are surfers. No two loners are alike, but all of us have one thing in common: we like to be alone. We like it. Everyone else - nonloners, that is — can't stand to be alone. They squirm. They feel ashamed. They yearn for company when they're alone. They're bored and don't know what to do. They're lonely.

We're not.

Maybe we're not holed up in caves all day, or in submarines like Captain Nemo in his Nautilus. But alone we feel most normal. Most ourselves. Most alive.

What did Kurt Cobain, Albert Einstein, and Georgia O'Keeffe have in common?

No, not their taste in music. Guess again.

They were loners.

Mainstream culture loves nonloners. Joiners, schmoozers, teamworkers, congregants and all those who play well with others scoop up the rewards.

Meanwhile, loners get dissed. All the time. At school, at work, at church or temple, in movies, loners are misunderstood, misjudged, loathed, pitied and feared. Reporters and profilers calmly and constantly call us perverts, losers, stalkers and serial killers.

If every headline that includes the word "loner" had "Canadian" or "certified public accountant" instead, imagine the outcry.

Nonloners call loners crazy. Cold. Stuck-up. Standoffish. Selfish. Sad. Bad. Secretive. But we know being a loner isn't about hating people. It's about essence, about necessity. We need what others dread. We dread what others need.

Do birds hate lips? Do Fijians detest snowplows?

A journalist and the author of several critically acclaimed books, and a lifelong loner, I wrote Party of One as a way to expose mainstream culture’s antiloner prejudice. But I also wrote it to show the ways in which loners have not just survived but actually changed the world, not just saved civilization but had a lot to do with creating it.

Famous loners span every era, every realm. Albert Einstein, Anne Rice, Michelangelo, Barry Bonds, Isaac Newton, Franz Kafka, Stanley Kubrick, Janet Reno, John Lennon, James Michener, Emily Dickinson, Alexander Pope, Hermann Hesse, Paul Westerberg, Georgia O’Keeffe, Kurt Cobain, Haruki Murakami, Gustav Klimt, Charles Schulz, Dan Clowes, Piet Mondrian, Saint Anthony, H.P. Lovecraft, Beatrix Potter and Joe DiMaggio....

Not to mention Superman, Batman and Shiva.

So — as the pickpockets sang in the musical Oliver! — consider yourself one of us.

"The Party of One" is a must read for all loners and for anyone trying to understand the loners in their lives. I'm a loner, and have always known I am a loner, and yet the book helped me realize that I have two children who are loners, one more than the other, and that I need to parent them with care, so as not to over tax their little nervous systems with too much "people" activity.

I tag:
Tina from MT Bar Farm
Lydia from Little Blue School
Leah from Webmama
Shell from Eclectic Eccentricities
Danielle from Amuzon's Practical Magic