So, I’ve finally created a personal blog where I can talk about my writing and my life beyond being a greenie (although, being green is a part of every aspect of my life).

I’ve been a personal blogger without a personal blog for way too long – finding ways to sneak little snippets of my life into that other blog over there, wondering if the poor soul who stumbled across my website while looking for a recipe to use up the beets in her CSA bag really wants to read a story about 3rd grade me pretending to drive a spaceship on the school bus.

But beyond telling you all of that, I really don’t know where to start, so I’ll just tell you ten non-green things about myself and we’ll call it a day. Then the next time I blog I won’t have such a hard time, because I won’t be just starting out.

1. I’m slightly afraid of Jello even after a concentrated effort to overcome my fear by eating massive amounts of red and purple Jello for a week. I don’t think anything should move like that and still be edible.
2. My dog, Argo, and I are probably closer than is really healthy or normal. We’ve worked out a signal where he comes over and licks his top front teeth at me. This means he’s either thirsty or he has to poop. Very useful, since his other “I have to poop” signal is dryheaving until someone lets him outside. My fiction never includes characters that are based on anyone I know (myself included), with the exception of a dog that is based almost entirely on Argo. He is my muse.
3. I’m now embarrassed that my very first blog post mentions poop, but not so embarrassed that I’ll change it.
4. I’ve been married for 4 1/2 years, and getting married to J is the best thing I’ve ever done.
5. I’m starting to realize that ten things is a lot and I’m considering going back and changing it to five, but I won’t. I’ll just cheat and make this one of the ten. Number 3 was probably cheating too.
6. I wrote a short story that was published in The Summerset Review and will be reprinted (in a different form) in Slice Magazine in September. It’s also being course adopted in a local junior high school English class.
7. I did horribly in junior high school and high school English, and am totally relishing the idea that my work is being taught in an English class. I’m also completely humbled by it, and if I think about it too much, I get a little choked up.
8. I barely cried at all until I hit 23. In my mid-twenties, one of my best friends from high school saw me tearing up and yelled “What the hell are you doing?” because he’d never seen me cry before. I have no idea what turned me into a crier after years of being a robot. Now, I cry whenever I have to buy someone a birthday card, because for some reason the stupid little sayings get me going. It’s mortifying.
9. I make my own cards.
10. I insist to my husband that I believe in Bigfoot, simply because my husband is a super logical type and it drives him up the wall when I talk about it. Also, if Bigfoot were real, I think he’d totally get me and we’d be really good friends.