Pining for Seven
Well, I was tagged by this gal to do a meme. Here goes: Seven things about me that you probably wish you didn't know, so my advice is to stop reading this blog, go find your favourite book, and read a chapter instead.
Don't say I didn't warn ya.
1. Although I have strong dislike for the smell of someone's passed gas, and just about puke when my dog farts, I actually like the smell of my own. Well, "like" might be too strong of a word. But it doesn't bother me. Which is good, because for some reason, I pass a lot of it. (Probably due to that disturbing candida albicans infestation that I am currently trying to purge from my system.) Aren't you glad, all of a sudden, that you are reading this safely from the other side of your computer monitor?
2. I have disfigured little toe-nails on both feet. This is a genetic malformation, passed down to me from my mother. At least one of my children got it from me. (I don't remember if either of the other two did at the moment.)
3. I have hardly ever gone garage-saling in my life, up until now. Tonight was the third time I've been out this year (which is saying a lot, since we've only had a snow-less landscape for about five weeks). Two weeks ago I came home with a van full of stuff, and the only thing I'd paid for was the car booster seat--the rest was given to me for free, since I came around about an hour before everyone was shutting down. Tonight, my husband and kids were with me, and as we left the last stop, my husband says to me, "You're dangerous at garage sales." Maybe that's because I wasn't exposed early enough in my life to build up an immunity to good, cool stuff going cheap. Or maybe "A fool and her money are soon parted." ...No, that can't be it.
4. I have had long hair for most of my life. (No, that's not the weird, random fact about me. Stay with me for a minute. Um, I mean, go back to your book.) The thing about long hair is, as you go through your day, shedding the 150 hairs that is the average, they don't sidle off into a corner to be picked up later from under the desk by the vacuum cleaner. No, that would be too polite. They stick to your coat, or someone's sock, or your child's head, or fall into the soup. Of course, everyone holds you personally responsible for where these stray hairs end up. Never mind that just one of your hairs draws as much attention as would be attracted if about eight or ten of theirs banded together, painted signs, and started protesting in front of the bathroom for Stray Rights.
More than that, since I often have my hair held back or pinned up for the majority of the day, most of my daily hair-loss quota comes out in the shower. This has caused much consternation over the years as the various men in my life have had to use TNT to break through the blockage this causes in the drain over time. So, to try to avoid these conflicts, not to mention the renovation bills, I try to stick the retirees on the side of the tub surround until the shower is finished, then wipe them up and throw them in the garbage can. Unfortunately, I don't always remember to do this (wipe them up, I mean). So, if I ever stay over at your house, and you find enough hair stuck to your shower wall to make a wig for a chemo patient after I leave, I'm sorry. I forgot, that's all.
5. The pinky fingers on both my hands point inwards at the end-most knuckle joint at about a 15-degree angle--another genetic souvenir, I believe this one is also from my mother. Don't worry, though--I have managed to make a herculean effort to overcome all odds, not letting this obstacle defeat me, and become the pianist, typist, and handi-crafting DIY person that you know and love today.
6. In grade one, I shared lockers with a girl named Tegan, who had the exact same blue plastic Holly Hobby lunchbox as I. Tegan became a lifelong friend of mine, and we could often be seen together during and between classes. Despite the fact that the only way we could look more un-alike is if we actually had different ethnicities, other people would frequently get our names mixed up, perhaps because they are both somewhat unusual, and both start with "T".
One day in high school, I was thinking about this exact phenomena when I heard Tegan approaching with some of our other friends from the far end of the hallway. I looked up and opened my mouth to call her, and with astonishment heard myself shout, "Talena!"
That would have been so much less embarrassing if there hadn't been actual witnesses.
7. My parents got the name "Talena" from a science-fiction novel by John Norman called Gor. The book is about some hunky college professor, with a very dashing name which I currently dis-remember, who gets sucked through a portal to a counter-earth on the other side of the sun where everyone lives in a tribal barbarian society and all the women are sex slaves that get branded on their thighs, and of course the professor turns into a hunky barbarian hero. Talena is a princess (or mayor's daughter--whatever), who is of course beautiful and captures our hunky hero's heart--at least for the first book in the twenty-something-plus-long series.
I have never read the books. Due to their sexual nature, I was never allowed to as a kid, and as an adult, I have somehow lost interest. Partly because they made a really BAD movie of the book in the 80's that, having recently been exposed to the joy that is Conan the Barbarian, is even worse than that, if you can believe it. Mullets, poor special effects (especially by today's standards, but it was bad even then) terrible acting, and an editor whom I am sure had not graduated from movie school yet combined to make this quite the memorable experience. But to top it off, they pronounced my name wrong, calling her "Ta-LAY-na". How hard can it be? It's phonetic! (For anyone out there wondering, my name is pronounced "Ta-LEE-na".)
For years, I thought John Norman had made the name up, because I could never find it in any baby name books or on any sites. Then, through a long and round-about-y story that I no longer have the energy to go into tonight, I found out it actually derives from "Thulna", who was the Etruscan goddess of love. (I wonder if Johnny knew that and named his heroine that on purpose because of it?)
Anyway, just this week on Facebook, I met, for the first time in my life, another Talena. She lives in Ontario, has more pages on the web dedicated to her than I do, thanks to the popularity of the band she was in as a teenager, and is now going to university for bioarcheological anthropology and First Nations studies. (She's even got her own Wikipedia page! TA--that's very cool--I never knew that before!)
We are starting a group on Facebook for all the other Talena's out there. (Okay, not all of them. Only the ones that don't just use it as their porn-star name.)
Okay, that's it. I tag Vicki, Anne, Candice, Rohini, Colleen, Dawn, and Peg. Remember to tag your seven when you're done!
Now, I dare you to say bioarcheological anthropology ten times really fast.
And then spell it out loud backwards.
Don't say I didn't warn ya.
1. Although I have strong dislike for the smell of someone's passed gas, and just about puke when my dog farts, I actually like the smell of my own. Well, "like" might be too strong of a word. But it doesn't bother me. Which is good, because for some reason, I pass a lot of it. (Probably due to that disturbing candida albicans infestation that I am currently trying to purge from my system.) Aren't you glad, all of a sudden, that you are reading this safely from the other side of your computer monitor?
2. I have disfigured little toe-nails on both feet. This is a genetic malformation, passed down to me from my mother. At least one of my children got it from me. (I don't remember if either of the other two did at the moment.)
3. I have hardly ever gone garage-saling in my life, up until now. Tonight was the third time I've been out this year (which is saying a lot, since we've only had a snow-less landscape for about five weeks). Two weeks ago I came home with a van full of stuff, and the only thing I'd paid for was the car booster seat--the rest was given to me for free, since I came around about an hour before everyone was shutting down. Tonight, my husband and kids were with me, and as we left the last stop, my husband says to me, "You're dangerous at garage sales." Maybe that's because I wasn't exposed early enough in my life to build up an immunity to good, cool stuff going cheap. Or maybe "A fool and her money are soon parted." ...No, that can't be it.
4. I have had long hair for most of my life. (No, that's not the weird, random fact about me. Stay with me for a minute. Um, I mean, go back to your book.) The thing about long hair is, as you go through your day, shedding the 150 hairs that is the average, they don't sidle off into a corner to be picked up later from under the desk by the vacuum cleaner. No, that would be too polite. They stick to your coat, or someone's sock, or your child's head, or fall into the soup. Of course, everyone holds you personally responsible for where these stray hairs end up. Never mind that just one of your hairs draws as much attention as would be attracted if about eight or ten of theirs banded together, painted signs, and started protesting in front of the bathroom for Stray Rights.
More than that, since I often have my hair held back or pinned up for the majority of the day, most of my daily hair-loss quota comes out in the shower. This has caused much consternation over the years as the various men in my life have had to use TNT to break through the blockage this causes in the drain over time. So, to try to avoid these conflicts, not to mention the renovation bills, I try to stick the retirees on the side of the tub surround until the shower is finished, then wipe them up and throw them in the garbage can. Unfortunately, I don't always remember to do this (wipe them up, I mean). So, if I ever stay over at your house, and you find enough hair stuck to your shower wall to make a wig for a chemo patient after I leave, I'm sorry. I forgot, that's all.
5. The pinky fingers on both my hands point inwards at the end-most knuckle joint at about a 15-degree angle--another genetic souvenir, I believe this one is also from my mother. Don't worry, though--I have managed to make a herculean effort to overcome all odds, not letting this obstacle defeat me, and become the pianist, typist, and handi-crafting DIY person that you know and love today.
6. In grade one, I shared lockers with a girl named Tegan, who had the exact same blue plastic Holly Hobby lunchbox as I. Tegan became a lifelong friend of mine, and we could often be seen together during and between classes. Despite the fact that the only way we could look more un-alike is if we actually had different ethnicities, other people would frequently get our names mixed up, perhaps because they are both somewhat unusual, and both start with "T".
One day in high school, I was thinking about this exact phenomena when I heard Tegan approaching with some of our other friends from the far end of the hallway. I looked up and opened my mouth to call her, and with astonishment heard myself shout, "Talena!"
That would have been so much less embarrassing if there hadn't been actual witnesses.
7. My parents got the name "Talena" from a science-fiction novel by John Norman called Gor. The book is about some hunky college professor, with a very dashing name which I currently dis-remember, who gets sucked through a portal to a counter-earth on the other side of the sun where everyone lives in a tribal barbarian society and all the women are sex slaves that get branded on their thighs, and of course the professor turns into a hunky barbarian hero. Talena is a princess (or mayor's daughter--whatever), who is of course beautiful and captures our hunky hero's heart--at least for the first book in the twenty-something-plus-long series.
I have never read the books. Due to their sexual nature, I was never allowed to as a kid, and as an adult, I have somehow lost interest. Partly because they made a really BAD movie of the book in the 80's that, having recently been exposed to the joy that is Conan the Barbarian, is even worse than that, if you can believe it. Mullets, poor special effects (especially by today's standards, but it was bad even then) terrible acting, and an editor whom I am sure had not graduated from movie school yet combined to make this quite the memorable experience. But to top it off, they pronounced my name wrong, calling her "Ta-LAY-na". How hard can it be? It's phonetic! (For anyone out there wondering, my name is pronounced "Ta-LEE-na".)
For years, I thought John Norman had made the name up, because I could never find it in any baby name books or on any sites. Then, through a long and round-about-y story that I no longer have the energy to go into tonight, I found out it actually derives from "Thulna", who was the Etruscan goddess of love. (I wonder if Johnny knew that and named his heroine that on purpose because of it?)
Anyway, just this week on Facebook, I met, for the first time in my life, another Talena. She lives in Ontario, has more pages on the web dedicated to her than I do, thanks to the popularity of the band she was in as a teenager, and is now going to university for bioarcheological anthropology and First Nations studies. (She's even got her own Wikipedia page! TA--that's very cool--I never knew that before!)
We are starting a group on Facebook for all the other Talena's out there. (Okay, not all of them. Only the ones that don't just use it as their porn-star name.)
Okay, that's it. I tag Vicki, Anne, Candice, Rohini, Colleen, Dawn, and Peg. Remember to tag your seven when you're done!
Now, I dare you to say bioarcheological anthropology ten times really fast.
And then spell it out loud backwards.
