How do you pick just one person?  One person to single out as the biggest influence of change? Is it your parents?  Your spouse?  Your children?  Your mentor?  The author of your favorite book?  I can’t pick just one – and have been struggling with this question for a week now knowing this post was lurking in the blog challenge.  I was even tempted to replace it with something easier.  But then what would be the point of the blog challenge if I got rid of all the challenging posts?  Then I decided that I wasn’t being graded on this and anyone I picked would give you an insight into me so I went with the first one that popped into my head a week ago.

Dear Big Sister,

             Thank you for surprising me with your conception at a time in my life when I was convinced I didn’t want kids because my career was so important I couldn’t be bothered with motherhood.  I was wrong.  Over the years I have suspended my selfishness in ways I didn’t think possible without regret just to make you happy which in turn makes me a better person.  Your logical mind challenges me daily to explain how life works which means I surely won’t ever suffer from Alzheimer’s.  In trying to mold you into a well-rounded adult, I hope I don’t scar you and that you don’t need therapy as an adult.

                                                                    Love, 

                                                                    Mom

Since it says ‘things’ and not ‘people’ I’m going to answer literally instead of going to the safe and predictable places like family or friends… which goes without saying anyway.

1.  A smart phone.  I never really got over my addiction to the Blackberry – which was my gateway drug.  Currently I have a Droid and just upgraded my work phone to an iPhone.  And I carry them both.  I feel naked if I don’t have my phone ON. MY. PERSON.  I’m not a lady who keeps it in her purse.  I don’t wear pants without pockets.  I never ever turn it off.  Seriously, I could not live without my phone.

2.  Running shoes.  Again, an addiction.  What does this say about me, I wonder?  I used to be a shoe whore and was a sucker for a cute pair of shoes – especially heels and strappy sandals.  Now I love running so much that I have spent my allotted shoe money for the last three years on running shoes rather than shoe shoes.  I do not currently own any sensible black shoes for work and my brown shoes – the last pair I haven’t worn out – are ones I bought more than three years ago.  Once my running shoes wear out and I can’t wear them for running, they transition into my everyday shoes.  And if the day came that I couldn’t afford to buy a new pair FOR running, I would spend food money to buy them and starve instead.

3.  Cottage cheese.  I eat cottage cheese every single day.  It is one of the best forms of non-meat protein and requires no work to prepare.  I love it plain. I love it with berries mixed in.  I could eat it for every meal.  If they quit making it, I would die.

4.  Hair color.  I suffer from a pretty shitty gene pool in the hair department.  I got my first gray hair at fifteen and have been coloring ever since.  If I didn’t have hair color, instead of looking like Little Sister’s mom, I’d look like her grandmother.  No joke.  No exaggeration.  I’m so busy these days that I don’t get time to color it often enough and I KNOW it’s time for color when I have a stripe of silver starring me down from the mirror yelling “color me quick!”.  If I had to endure having THAT hair color from roots to ends, I would die.

5.  Books.  Bet you saw this one coming, huh?  I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love to read.  I came home the first day of Kindergarten so mad because “they didn’t teach us to read today” like my Mom had said would happen.  I always have a book with me – either tucked into my bag or loaded up on my iPod or my reader app on my smart phone or all three.  If other authors stopped writing great stories for me to read I would die.  Probably why I want to be one of those authors and give back to other readers like me.

So, what on this list surprised you the most?

Time to get a little heavy… fair warning.  As I said, this list has a bunch of things I don’t normally blog about which is, I guess, the entire point.  I have two specific moments that, at their essence, are really the same moment with two different people and are the only two real regrets that I have in my life.  I wish I could go back and say goodbye to my maternal grandpa and my fraternal grandma differently before they both died.

One thing I don’t do well is death – I always find a reason to skip a funeral, when I go to viewings I skip even going near the body.  It isn’t necessarily that it creeps me out but just that I don’t get the whole ritual.  When I die, I don’t even want to be embalmed.  Donate all my organs, put me in a cardboard box, let my kids say goodbye one last time then burn me to ashes and have a gathering to celebrate my life.  Once I’m gone there’s nothing left in the shell of my body so why go to all the trouble with preserving it.  And don’t even get me started about the whole idea of cemeteries with all those bodies rotting away sealed up tight where they can’t even nourish the trees and other life around them.

My grandpa died four years ago.  He was one of the most important men to ever come into my life.  I was there with the rest of my family – brothers, sister, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, literally everyone – when he died.  I think he held out long enough for us all to get there after the dreaded middle-of-the-night phone call before he took his last breath.  We all took turns going to the bed and saying our last goodbye and while I didn’t skip it, I didn’t do everything I wish I had.  I held his hand and told him I loved him but I hesitated and for some reason held back throwing myself on him for one last hug and kissing him like I really wanted to do.  So, I’d like to relive that moment and this time not give a shit how it looked or if it messed up some machine hooked to him and give him that hug.

I should have learned my lesson about this particular moment by the time my dear grandma on my Dad’s side passed away a year later.  But, instead I listened to my Dad – who knows how I feel about the whole subject of death.  He told me the last time he had seen her she hadn’t even known who he was and that it wouldn’t matter if I went to see her one last time or not.  So I didn’t.  At the time I rationalized that it would break my heart to have her not recognize me and to see her in such a diminished capacity preferring instead to remember the small, sweet lady who was always such a gracious and giving woman.  Even now I wonder how different it would have been had I gone to say goodbye.  Maybe she would have known me and taken some small comfort in my presence.  I’ll never know and I wish I had gone.

For a long time I’ve been fascinated with all things occult.  I love astrology, read Tarot cards, am fascinated with palm readers, have been to a psychic, and always gravitate to movies and books with these things and characters who do them.  One of the things I’ve always said is “I wish I had a crystal ball!” – usually when I’m trying to make tough choices where there are no easy answers and could mean significant change in my life.  When I got the blogging bug – which seems like a lifetime ago – I thought it would be cool to theme it around being a glimpse into my life from the outside – like a crystal ball – and also a reflection of my own life from the inside.   Over the years it has been just that – a way for me to project outward what I’m doing, feeling, thinking and also for me to reflect on what makes me who I am.  I still have days when I really wish I had that magical crystal ball to make my life easier, but in the meantime I have this!

My blog began before I consciously decided I wanted to be a writer who would also have a blog or thought there might be actual people who would read it regularly.  Many times I have thought “Terra, could you have made the blog url any longer and why doesn’t it match the name of the blog?” and have thought long and hard about changing it.  But if I change the url to match the name of the blog would I lose people who stop by occasionally or would it be easier for everyone to find – never mind the fact it’s printed on my business cards?  Or would I fall into the trap of being one of “those” bloggers who are infamous for changing their blog name or deleting them? I’ve found several in this category over the years and am sad when the blog is one day inexplicably gone.  So of course I don’t want to do that to any of MY readers.

I’d love to know…  How did you find me in the blog-isphere and what do you think of the name or the url – love it, hate it or never thought about it?

My favorite quote of all time is the last stanza of this Victorian poem by William Ernest Henley.

I love the power this poem conveys – especially the last two lines.  No matter what happens, I know that I am in control of my fate and that I am the one steering the ship of my life.  It helps me avoid falling into the trap of feeling victimized or being made to feel guilty by others.  I don’t remember when I first heard this poem – I think it was an old Army veteran I worked with about twenty years ago – but I don’t remember when I haven’t had those last few lines always running through my subconscious. 

Having to pick just one favorite book when I read many a month is brutal.  Since I frequently review books here on the blog, I think you probably know by well what kinds of books I read.  But, pick one I will.  My favorite book – based on how much it impacted my life – is “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan.  This was the second I read from Pollan and together they literally changed my life.  Does it surprise you that my pick for this category comes in the form of non-fiction?

How do I pick just one?  I love movies.  I love movies so much I didn’t once bitch about Netflix raising their prices and charging separately for streaming and by-mail options AND have continued paying for both.  Instead of nailing down just one movie that I love, which would be like picking my favorite child, I’ll pick my favorite genre which is science fiction.  I loved Armageddon, I loved all the Star Wars, I loved all the Star Treks… Go figure, a technology gadget geek loves science fiction.  So much for learning something new about me, huh?

I don’t know what specific date I started blogging – sometime in 2008 I think.  But, the new blogger layout now shows me the number of posts I’ve done and this is number two hundred.  That number seems significant so I thought I’d do something to celebrate.  I see lots of people doing these 30-Day Blog Challenges and I found one that is designed to let readers get to know the blogger a little better.  (As if you don’t know me pretty well already after two hundred posts of hold-nothing-back, right?)  One of the lists has things on it that I do not normally blog about so I thought what the hell.  The next month you can all get to know me just a little better and I’d love it if you commented and told me these same facts about you!

Day 1: A favorite song

This is a hard one to nail down.  I am a child of the 80’s and love pretty much any hair band.  I played guitar in a garage band back in college and we did some extremely heavy stuff.  At the time, my favorite was Metallica.  I was also classically trained on the piano and LOVE classical music, especially Tchiakovsky.  But, right now my favorite song is “So What” by Pink.  It has such a great beat and great lyrics and Pink is one of my favorite artists because she knows how to tell it like it is.  I also love pretty much anything by Katy Perry and have been known to sing along to some of the teeny boppers that Big Sister listens to – like Selena Gomez lately.  I love music in general and will listen to anything – as long as it isn’t country which makes me violent and irritable or show tunes which I never got into.  The heavier the better if I’m trying to concentrate and the lyrics have to hit home to make it a favorite.

Stay tuned for the next thirty days for other random facts with a window into who I am.  Hope you enjoy!