Eight Things Meme

I'm going to go a bit counterculture here and neglect to paste in the rules of the meme. I don't feel like these rules are so crucial to understanding what this is all about, and I'm not always that big on thinking that the rules always have to apply!


1. I often drink water (cold NYC tap is the best) with a few drops of lemon juice concentrate added in. Or sometimes seltzer with the same add-in. Ann has the habit of referring to this as "melon water" and can't get the word "lemon" straight. I'm so used to hearing it that I now refer to it as melon water myself. Speaking of, RaggedyDad, can you make me some melon water with ice and a straw?

2. I like to bake, and baking means eggs. I use a specific glass for cracking the eggs into for checking blood spots, and I still mentally think "No red!" whenever the egg is clean (almost always). Since Ann and Andy are usually on the step-ladder next to me, I taught them to check from on top and from underneath the glass and to call out "No red!" too. Andy's egg announcement sounds more like "Aaah-Re!"

3. For several years after moving here from Israel at age 5, I hardly used my Hebrew (aside from being able to coast through Hebrew language tasks at school) but luckily I got it back for the most part when I was ready to get into it again. These days I push myself to use it whenever I can (with Ann's teachers, in half of the stores around here, etc.), glaring errors and all.

4. Usually, at some point on my birthday, I cry. Not because of getting older, since I still feel like I'm about 16. I guess it's probably out of nostalgia and the sadness of time passing. As a kid, I was often away at camp on my birthday, and it just felt very empty being away from home on my birthday.

5. My aunt is a nurse-midwife and delivered me. And I spent my first day in the world in an incubator because I was small.

6. Even though I cook a good deal these days, I have a mental block when it comes to potatoes. When it comes the differences in cooking and peeling approaches to mashed potatoes vs. potatoes for potato salad, etc., I have to quickly consult with the man of the house.

7. I don't know how to ride a bike. Awful, I know. My brothers were teaching me and got impatient. If I remember correctly, they took the training wheels off too soon and then got bored and went to go play Pole Position or something (I can still hear that droning sound in my memory!). Hence, I still can't ride a bike. RaggedyDad, who rode his own bike for miles to and from school, tried to teach me last summer in Belgium, but his sister's bike was a poor fit and I was pretty hopeless in my apprehension.

8. My mother has two sisters and one brother. Her sisters both have only sons. So I'm my grandmother's only granddaughter through one of her own daughters. Being that I'm my mother's only daughter, Ann is (so far) the only continuation of the "chain of women" phenomenon in our family.


I think that most people I'd tag have either done this already or been tagged. If anyone who hasn't been tagged yet wants to do this meme, consider yourself tagged!

p.s. triLcat, the Polarity Meme is my next one, although I may do a somewhat abridged version!