That 25 Thing List

If you're on Facebook at all you've been asked by everybody to list 25 things about yourself that people might not know. I'm finally succumbing to that, so here it is.

1. Hah! Drawing a blank already. I wrote a humor column for several years about my life so I must have given everything away then. Let me think. My second toe is longer than my first toe - on both feet. They do match.

2. No one has ever broken up with me. I've done the breaking up. Yep, left littered hearts all over the place.

3. I haven't had a date since my divorce six years ago. I know, it's pathetic. I haven't met a single man in that time either. Where do they all go when they get divorced? Do they just drop off the face of the earth? Do they all buy sail boats and drift around the world? Do they go on adventures to the center of the earth? What happens to them? Isn't it pathetic that I actually admit to this?

4. I'm a convert to the LDS church. When I was 17 Elder Smith and Elder Smith came to my door and taught me about Joseph Smith. It's a good thing I knew about the Osmonds otherwise I would have thought everyone's last name was Smith.

5. I collect things. I still have my record collection from the seventies, my books from when I was a kid and my first watch from when I was five (it's a necklace watch from my godmother). I also have dolls, teapots, cross stitch supplies and lots of dust. I'm not especially attached to the dust, I'm just lazy and if I don't disturb it, it doesn't make me sneeze or itch. We seem to have a deal.

6. I'm very good at needlework. I've been paid to do it and have had my work on the front of a magazine and charts. The trouble is, cross stitch takes forever and pays almost nothing. I decided it wasn't worth it to do a project I hated just to make next to nothing. So cross stitch is a hobby. I do very elaborate pieces with beads and specialty stitches and specialty threads. I have about 20 projects started and several hundred waiting for me. I'm trying to figure out a way to take it all with me when I go.

7. I've been told by several people that I should become a professional actor. Trouble is, I don't know how, so right now I satisfy that need by being in local productions. My favorite role was playing The White Witch in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. My kids had lots of fun calling me a witch all the time.

8. Other families do soccer or hockey. We do theater. My kids are all in the current production we're working on now.

9. My favorite week of the year is performance week. We eat, live and breathe at the theater that week. People feed us, we perform and play. Why can't I get paid for this? I would be quite happy never having to cook or clean and instead focusing on being somebody else and getting applauded for it.

10. I keep thinking of giving up writing. I'm not making money at it and then everytime I do seriously consider giving it up, something happens that tells me that I shouldn't. Like selling a story to a major magazine, or getting into a Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother's Soul, or getting a book published. It's driving me nuts! It's like having a carrot dangled out at me that I get to touch now and then. I don't need to be J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer, but being able to support my family using my talents would be nice.

11. I have an Office Administration Diploma. I'm not an Office Admin person. I hate the phone, I hate 9-5. And most Office Admin work is mind-numbing.

12. Yeah, I hate the phone. I don't know what that's all about. I have a cell phone which I keep forgetting to charge up. I cringe when the phone rings. I figure it can't be good.

13. I love playing pool. I found a friend who loves it too, so we go to lounges where they have coin operated tables and play. We both suck but neither of us cares. It's a cheap past time.

14. I am not an athlete. I have never been an athlete. When I was a teenager I looked like an athlete. Boy did I disappoint some gym teachers. "All right everybody, let's watch Anna and see how not to do it."

15. I hate gym teachers. They've got a mean streak.

16. I'm 46 and still have ALL my teeth, I don't wear glasses, and I'm not on any medication. It's a good thing I'm not on medication because I've noticed that the letters on pill bottles have gotten smaller.

17. When I was a kid I could sing. I was even picked along with four other girls to be a singing angel, the only ones who sang anything. Nobody wants to hear me sing now.

18. When all my kids get together it's like being in the middle of a sitcom. They're all hysterically funny and people that they bring just sit there with their mouths open, that is when they're not laughing. We should have our own show.

19. I've been parasailing, was almost thrown off a cliff by a horse in Mexico, took a pie in the face onstage, was given a dead deer on my kitchen table as payment for an antennae, took a ride in a six seater airplane, gave birth seven times without any drugs, had a tire explode while travelling sixty miles an hour down a highway in nowhere Montana, survived a 20 year marriage, been chased by squirrels, and travelled across Canada, up to the NWT and down to Utah in a 20 year old Chrysler Labaron. I'm learning to handle things.

20. I'd like to get married again but I don't think I want to live with a man. I would like to have side by side his and hers houses. That way we can sneak across at night and feel like we're doing something wrong.

21. My body has a high survival instinct and won't allow me to starve. If we were all on a deserted island with no food, everyone else would wither to nothing and I would look like I ate you all.

22. I had anorexic behaviors for thirty years, but I gained weight. I actually liked feeling hungry.

23. I have a severe rodent phobia. Most especially rats, but all their rat cousins too. My children have never been allowed to have a hamster, gerbil or even a guinea pig. Those things escape and then you find them in your shoe. I do not want to find a rat in my shoe. I'm convinced that's why squirrels chased me. If I ever get married he better not have a rodent phobia because both of us standing on chairs screaming won't help me.

24. I tell myself that if I don't find my knight here on earth, I'll get a real knight in the next life. You know, from the 1100's or something. Wouldn't that be cool to be with someone from anther time? But I understand they were short back then. I don't want him short.

25. There is a 120 pound woman inside of me screaming to get out. It's too bad it looks like I ate her.