Oops, Make that Four...No, Five...

I just discovered yet another meme I'd been tagged with during my brief (at least, *I* thought it was brief!) absence, and this one is a double from PetLvr. It's actually ten days old, but since I just found out about it this evening it should really be at the end of the list. I'm bumping it up because, frankly, it's the easiest one.

Dane Morgan tagged me with a great meme about a week ago--one of the best I've seen and one that definitely goes beyond the fun "share a little personal information" of most memes. But it's taking more work--I've actually been working on my answers during my evening commute. And Peter's meme itself isn't hard, but he put me to shame with his illustrations and made me want to invest a little more--and I definitely lack the technical skills to follow his example. So those are still to come.

So on to today's double: First, three things I couldn't get through the day without. Interestingly, I saw this meme on someone else's blog a few weeks ago and thought that there really weren't THINGS I couldn't get through the day without, but as soon as I saw PetLvr's post this evening, the first item on this list flashed into my mind.

1. 51 minutes of extra sleep on the morning train. As a single mom with a somewhat-more-than-full-time job and a 3.25 hour a day round-trip commute, it's pretty rare for me to consistently squeeze out five hours of sleep a night. That extra almost-hour on the morning train is critical.

2. Bathing. The instructions specified that we were to overlook the obvious, but this isn't about being clean. Water is essential to my psychological well-being. I can take a quick shower if I have to, but half an hour in the bathtub with a novel is as restorative for me as a week at a spa--I can't fairly say I couldn't get through the day without it, but you'll like dealing with me a lot better if I get it.

3. Hugs and kisses from my daughter. I know...I know...she's almost twelve and I'm going to have to get over this one pretty soon. But I've been lucky so far and I'm holding on for dear life.

The second piece asked about the music in our "players". Since I'm old and not technologically inclined, that means a CD changer or my computer--no i-anythings or MPwhatevers here. Rick Springfield's 1999 CD, Karma, is definitely at the top of my "most listened to" list (and I'll bet you didn't even know it existed). Other frequent appearances include Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Elvis Costello's Armed Forces, Olivia Newton-John's Back to Basics (but I always skip "Physical"), Bruce Springsteen's The River, The Very Best of Rod Stewart, Maggie Brandon's You Come to Me , U2 War and Bruce Cockburn's Stealing Fire.

I'm holding off on tagging for the moment because I've got a few more of these to get through in the next couple of days, but keep an eye out...I'm going to shuffle and send them right back at you!

This Tagging Thing is Getting out of Hand

To be fair, Barb DIDN'T tag me for this one. No, on her blog she made the kind, understanding declaration that she wasn't tagging people because she knew how busy we all were. And then she discretely left a comment here letting me know that I was "on". Actually, the comment came before the disclaimer, but that's probably not pertinent to the story.

The questions are about books, though, so how can we go wrong?

1. Hardcover or paperback, and why? Paperback to read, hardcover to reverence.

2. If I were to own a book shop, I would call it... probably The House Bookstore, which would probably be trademark infringement or something, and isn't even a very good name for a bookstore. The thing is, there used to be this coffee shop in DeKalb, Illinois called The House, and it was everything a bookstore should be. They served tea in glass pots and had worn sofas and shelves full of donated books, and my sister started the very first House journal, which grew to book after book of notes, random journal entries, sketches and poetry by anyone who passed through the place. If ever you read a book of mine and there's a coffee shop in it, it's The House, even though I'll pretend otherwise, and it will always be warm and softly lit inside and raining or snowing outside the window.

3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title)... oh, man. I don't know whether I should say it. It's the last line of The Sun Also Rises, and I love it because it puts the whole book in a different perspective, but that also makes it a huge spoiler. Everyone already knows it, right? Well, I'm not taking the chance. If you know what it is then you know what I mean and don't need me to write it down. If you don't, it wouldn't really mean anything to you anyway, right?

4. The author (alive or deceased) I would love to have lunch with would be... Sheldon Vanauken. I discovered Sheldon Vanauken's writing several years after he died, or I would have...err...I believe the phrase "introduced myself" is probably preferable to "stalked him until he consented to converse with me". He was friends with C.S. Lewis, another of my favorite authors, and he'd be MORE than welcome to join us, but if I only get one, it's Vanauken.

5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except for the SAS survival guide, it would be… I answered this question once before by choosing a volume I own that has 49 of Hemingway's short stories and a complete novel in it, but I think that's cheating. This time, I'm going to pick Atlas Shrugged, because it's long, I've read it a couple of times without getting bored, and it might inspire me to remember that I could figure out a way to either get off the island or make it work for me if I remembered who I was. As an added bonus, if I did get bored I could occupy myself endlessly by removing or shifting around the randomly placed commas.

6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that… I would not love someone to invent any bookish gadgets at all. I would like everything but old fashioned books to be abolished.

7. The smell of an old book reminds me of... oddly enough, a stranger's basement. When I was in high school I needed a copy of a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and couldn't find one at the library or regular bookstore. My mother called a used bookstore listed in the telephone book and it turned out to be a book dealer with aisles and aisles of books, many of them antique, in her basement. I still remember feeling like I'd stumbled into a treasure vault.

8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title)... Dagny Taggart, of course.

9. The most overestimated book of all times is… That first Anne Rice vampire thing.

10. I hate it when a book… ends. Well, not any book, but when it's a really good book I really don't want to come back up out of it, and it's almost impossible to find something to read next when I've just done a full immersion thing with a book.

I'm not going to tag anyone in this post since it's only been a few days since I hit up 8 people, but watch your comments...I might stealthily come around and invite your participation....

Eight Things

I just discovered that I'd been tagged to tell you all eight things about myself. The writer who tagged me, at Chitchat and All That, listed this as one of her eight things, and I loved it. This is my favorite kind of statement to see from writers!

2. It has always been a dream of mine to have a writing career that would financially and emotionally support me. Recently, I have moved that dream into the goal category and have begun to make an action plan and timeline for it.

I have to warn you, though--unlike my predecessor and her predecessor, I'm not going to try to figure out what I can tell you about myself that won't bore you to tears--my theory is that if you're the sort of person who is bored to tears by the details of someone else's life, you probably aren't reading this.

The struggle for me, though, is that I'm a pretty simple person, and so it always seems likely to me that everyone already knows everything there is to know about me.

Here goes:

1. The most expensive car I've ever owned cost $10,200. That's worked out very well for me. My $10,200 Cavalier and my $8,000 Neon both lasted more than 275,000 miles.

2. I have no interest in strange dogs. I miss my poodle of 17 years like crazy, and my family's various dogs have been like members of the family, but I'm not apt to stop and pet someone else's (or even notice it) on the street.

3. I babysat well into college and was in hot demand because I actually spent all the time doing stuff with the kids and enjoyed it. When I was a teenager, I cut pictures of babies out of magazines. When I was a single adult, I took my friends' kids out to parks and playlands and anywhere else their parents didn't feel like going.

4. I never get rid of anything. I still have clothes I haven't worn in 20 years, shoes that haven't fit me since my daughter was born eleven years ago, and 500 purple envelopes from a project I completed four or five years ago.

5. I love standardized tests.

6. The thing I love most about my job is being in a position to give people the opportunity to write.

7. I lose interest in what I've written as soon as I'm done with it--so much so that sometimes I don't get around to trying to publish it. I don't even have copies of most of my published articles.

8. Every Monday morning when I'm lugging my garbage cans up the hill behind my house at 6 a.m., I wish I was married.

Now, I'm supposed to pass this along to eight other bloggers:

I'll start with my friend Margo at Margo's Meanderings, though I only need seven from her because I just discovered by reading her blog that she went to Gettysburgh, PA in August (we live in Illinois) and I somehow missed the whole thing.

I will SPARE my friend Barb (unless she wants to play) because I don't think she's recovered from coming up with 100 things yet, and because she is as we speak creating gift bags for more than FIFTY children for her daughter's seventh birthday party.

I'd love to hear eight things from Gerri at Absolutely True, because she's such a together person writing about such bizarre events that anything she has to say create a compelling juxtaposition...or she'll surprise me.

Next, Theresa at Sleeping Kitten, Dancing Dog. Theresa has quietly done almost every interesting thing I can think of.

I hope that Writing True will play along, because I'd be very interested to see what sorts of true and interesting tidbits he can share while preserving his anonymity.

I'd also like to invite the author of I Don't Know Where I'm From, But I Do Know Where I've Been, because readers of her blog know a lot about what she's been through but not so much about who she is today.

Then, in an unprecedented move, I'm going to take a crack at my sister. Since she doesn't read my blog and she hasn't updated hers since December of 2006, I doubt that she'll ever see this or respond, but she's on the list.

And finally, Ramblings of a Longtime Procrastinator, because she had the (misfortune?) to be the last person to have signed up for my Writers and Writing Group at Blog Catalog, and I don't know anything about her yet.