OK

I got tagged last week, twice! So I'm going to go through with it, without the re-tagging, because that's my passive aggressive way of not following the rules. Ha! Also I'll be doing it my way, and that means...with pictures!

You go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday (month and day) Then you write down 3 events, 2 births, 1 holiday.

Have I ever told you my birthday? Or are ya new here? Can you guess after reading this? HInt: The defining historical legendary birth on this supposed date is unproven and therefore left off the list.

EVENTS
1643 - Christmas Island founded and named by Captain William Mynors of the East India Ship Company vessel, the Royal Mary. I mention this since my pirate name would be Booty Landlubber, if I was sort of okay with boats...

1818 - The first performance of "Silent Night" takes place in the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria. I still think it's a beautiful song, and very difficult sing, and spine tingling when sung right.

1968 - Apollo program: Apollo 8 performs the very first successful Trans Earth Injection (TEI) maneuver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit. My son Bucky went through a hardcore Outer Space Phase from age 4 to about...forever. The kid is all over the NASA podcasts. Right now he's been talking about Phoenix a lot, and he's not talking about my horse. My horse is not going to Mars. I spent the Boy's first Kindergarten year reading ridiculously above-age-level books to him about space travel. The first time we took them to Florider to see the Granparents for Christmas holidays, we HAD TO take the kids to visit our friends at NASA.

BIRTHS
1878 - Louis Chevrolet, Swiss-born race car driver (d. 1941) And then they named a car after him! And pickup trucks!




1954 - Annie Lennox, Scottish singer I think she's so cool. I'm glad I share a birthday with her. She blew my mind the first time I heard her voice, on my little blue plastic radio, perched on a shelf in my bedroom in the farmhouse. My world expanded a little bit because of Annie Lennox.

Now here's an interesting co-incidence, that I grew up knowing about:
1971 - Justin Trudeau, Canadian media personality


1973 - Alexandre Trudeau, Canadian journalist


(These young men are just two more reasons to love my country, eh?)

Justin and Sacha are the sons of former late Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his pretty young wife, Margaret. Maggie might be known to you as the crazy chick who decorated a "Freedom Room" in 24 Sussex Drive and partied her ass off at Studio 54. Or you might know Maggie as an organizer of an avalanche safety group, after the tragic death of her third son, Michel. Or, you might know of Maggie because she is bi-polar and at one point was as nutty as brain damaged sheep dog. I love Maggie now for speaking out about mental illness, telling the world about her struggles and how she's put her life together. Her sons are clever and articulate and may or may not be running the country some day. If so, our birthdays may become a national holiday! Oh wait.....

At first I thought it was reeeeeeally special to have my birthday. I still do. But I've decided that really it's just another day on the calendar. Any baby conceived in March can be born on my birthday. It's just that on MY birthday, EVERYBODY gets a present!!!!

HOLIDAY

You know by now, right????

So as for the second tag from last week...EIGHT RANDOM THINGS THAT YOU DON'T ALREADY KNOW ABOUT ME?????

I think you already know everything that I am willing to disclose at this point in my life. I mean, I write fiction and hope in the future to do it for a living. So I have to keep a few secrets. I have to. And also I don't really want to give it all up. But since I was asked nicely by someone I dig totally, I've spent some brain cells on this over the weekend. Here's what I've come up with:

1) I hate having wet feet.

2) I only comb my hair once a day.

3) The first time I went into a Chapters store, about ten years ago, I walked in with thirty bucks and walked back out again about ten minutes later, with the money, in tears. It was a whole building full of books. FULL OF BOOKS.
I couldn't buy all the books I wanted to read or look at. Even if I had all the money in the world, I could never read everything I want to read. Come to think of it, that might have been one of those anxiety attacks that I didn't recognize. I remember my chest tightening and my throat closing up. My husband looked so disappointed when I came back out to the car empty handed. it was Mother's day, a cool misty day, and the babies had both fallen asleep in the car. We'd gone out for a drive in the country with our '76 Nova, because we were kind of broke, but happened to have a good amount of gas in the tank. He pressed the cash into my hand and sent me into the brand new bookstore once we got back into town. I was afraid to spend much needed grocery money on a book for me. Even now, when I go into that store- which I do, about once a month- I still get that panicky feeling.

4) I have memory gaps. I can't explain it. There are pieces missing. I've always been forgetful but this is strong. This weekend, on our way up north to take Bucky to his friend's cottage, the rest of the family remembered a gas station stop on last summer's trip. I don't. It's gone. I don't even get why it was such an event that they remember the gas station and I don't. On the way up to our friend's place, the kids pointed out the place. Nope. Don't remember. Then on the way home, we went right past it and I said nothing. They looked at me funny. I had no idea that was the place. Gone. Like I wasn't even there. I have some memories that are so vivid they seem unreal...I could tell you in great detail what a guy was wearing as he waiting in front of me at the bank. But other things are obliterated.


Stopping for diesel and a snack is no big loss to forget. Apparently they all have a reason to remember but really it's trivial. What scares me is that other, more significant things are disappearing. Last summer I told Jethro I'd like to go see Robert Plant when he came through Ontario, because he changed my life the way only a rock star can alter the brain of a 15 year old girl, way back in 1986. I announced that I had to see Robert Plant before one of us dies. He looked at me funny. "You already did. Don't you remember?"


Imagine my shock. I dug through my tin box and found the ticket stub. All that came back to me was a memory of looking at the ticket, and a vague idea that my friend's blue Chevy Caprice had something to do with it. Jethro wants to know if I remember the tour- it was Now And Zen- and did I remember the stage set with the big steel circles? Nope. Opening act? Nope. Gone. I damn near cried. I saw my hero and forgot it! A year later since this discovery, it's still not coming back to me.

But I am still determined to see this man live (again) before one of us dies. Yeah, I know he's like, old and stuff and I don't care because I'm not 15 anymore and he was always my mom's age, duh and my love for him is enduring and unconditional. So there. If he has to get onto the stage on a stretcher...and I'm pushing a walker...I don't care.



I'll probably forget it anyways. Dammit.

5) I'm not nearly as funny in real life as I am on my blog. I can barely speak in full sentences. Hell sometimes I just babble incoherently.

6) Also I'm shorter in real life.

7) And ten pounds heavier.


8) In grade 4 my teacher asked me if I could write about something other than horses for my assignments. I told him no. I told him I'd made a definite decision to write only about horses in my homework and I was not going to change my mind. That learned him.