Honestly!

I am honored to have been tagged awarded this awesome meme award!! Dear Ornery's Wife over at ThoughtsFromMillerManor (only one of several blogs she writes, by the way) has done it again and made my day. And I honestly mean that. It really chirks me up to be thought of, even for a meme. And really, I kind of like memes. Remember? I like filling out forms.

Which reminds me, I meant to tell you this: A while back we got sent a survey in the mail. It was a week's worth of log pages to tell what you watched on television, and when, and for how long. I threw it away because 1) it was addressed to Hubby and he hates filling out forms, and 2) we don't watch TV. We don't even own a television. I figured it wouldn't do much good to fill it out.

A couple weeks later, we got another one, which I threw away. A week later, we got ANOTHER one. I don't remember how many I threw away. Either two or three. But on the last one we got, I noticed that they were promising to send us $35 if we returned the survey, duly filled out. I don't know if they'd been promising that all along or not, but suddenly I realized, I could earn some money!

Long story short, every day that week I filled in the date at the top of the log page and checked the box at the bottom that said "I didn't watch television this week." Then I sent it in.

And whaddaya know? Not long after, I got an envelope in the mail with thirty-five dollars CASH in it. What could I do with $35 all my own that I earned myself?!

And THAT'S the story behind my pierced ears and my haircut!

ANYway. Back to my award--

Here are the rules:

When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to said person so everyone knows he or she is real. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have 7 friends. Show the 7 random victims’ names and links and leave them a harassing comment informing that they were prized with “Honest Weblog.” Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten honest things about yourself. Then, pass it on!

TEN HONEST THINGS ABOUT ME

1. I'm still undecided about keeping my earrings. (Does that surprise you?) Right now, even though they're pretty, they're a pain-- my ears hurt, of course, it's been only a week and a half since I had them done; and, Hubby loves to touch my face and my ears, and now he can't, or if he forgets it hurts me; and, I'm not sleeping well at night because it hurts to lay on my side, right on the earrings (I have to cup my hand around my ear, and it's just not "right"). However, I'm trying to be patient. Surely once everything heals up, things will be back to normal. However, if not? Out the earrings go.

2. Plus, I always sort of prided myself on not being vain and worldly. I was about the only person I knew without earrings.

3. However, I loved the idea of having little sparklies that you just catch a glimpse of behind my long hair. Now I have no basis for being proud because I guess I'm as vain as the next woman.

4. If I can get started on a project early enough I do great, but as soon as it feels like the deadline is looming over my head I get paralyzed and have a very hard time getting it done. I was terribly afraid I would somehow drop the ball regarding LovelyDaughter's wedding because of that. Fortunately, we all managed to pull it off.

5. I don't like to go to doctors if I can help it. To quote Miss Marple from an Agatha Christie book, "I have had too much experience of life to believe in the infallibility of doctors. Some of them are clever men and some of them are not, and half the time the best of them don't know what is the matter with you. I have no truck with doctors and their medicines myself."

6. Plus, you have to have a spare thousand dollars laying around if you call in a medical professional. Which we usually don't.

7. I love playing violin on the worship team at church. Someday I'd like to maybe play in an orchestra again. Or a string quartet. Or a band. Since our family music sort of broke up, I'm missing it.

(Wow. TEN things? Um....)

8. I'm like Ornery's Wife, and I dislike (artificially) scented things. I think, actually, I'm somewhat allergic or something, because I get headaches from scented candles, perfumes, and anything from Bath & Bodyworks. Seriously? I even have to walk a wide berth around the Bath & Bodyworks store at the mall. (REAL scents don't bother me--pine, most flowers, fruit, grass....) Before I buy a new brand of shampoo, or deodorant, or anything, I have to smell it first, to make sure I can stand it. And the smell of Simple Green makes me throw up.

9. Speaking of allergic, I can't use artificial sweeteners, not that I even want to. I can tell within seconds of tasting if something has Sucralose in it. In fact, I had a run-in with that recently: I bought a large can of hot chocolate mix. Since it had been a long time since I had bought hot chocolate mix, I scanned the ingredient list quickly, saw that the first two ingredients were sugar and corn syrup solids, breathed a sigh of relief and bought it. I had a cup one day and I kept saying to myself, "This hot chocolate tastes strange. Oh well, must be because I haven't had any for a while and I'd forgotten how 'storebought' it tastes." The next day I had another cup, and I kept tasting that odd taste. Finally I said out loud, to no one in particular, "This tastes like it has artificial sweetener in it!" I grabbed the can to look at the ingredients again, and do you know what the very last ingredient was? Sucralose!

This is just so wrong in two ways. First of all, how can I taste that tiny amount, and why would it make my stomach turn? Secondly, if the mix is mostly sugar and corn syrup solids already, why do they need to put in any artificial sweetening at all? Grr.

10. I don't form habits easily. This is both good and bad. It means I don't have a lot of bad habits, except maybe picking at my face when I'm nervous, but it also means I have trouble forming good habits. Any wobble in my life completely resets my hard drive and I forget what I was doing. This is one reason why learning to follow the daily prayers is helpful to me. It's a good habit that builds my faith and starts a bit of a rhythm going. I hope I can keep it up.


And now, I'm awarding this to every one of you that is reading this right now. You are already one of the favored few (as GuitarGeek said at LovelyDaughter's small, exclusive wedding) and you deserve an award. Take it, and my blessings.