Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Seven

OK...just in case you haven't figured it out, Word Nerd Speaks is 100% covered in awesome sauce!

I can't figure out how she does it but, in between working, writing, and living her life she still manages to find time to read a gazillion blogs and comment on them...all the time. Not only is she a fantastic writer but she's also out there, in the trenches of the internet, supporting lots of other people who write - one of those people being me. Perhaps she has minions who help her. I don't know. All I know is that I'm always flattered to see a comment from her come through my inbox and humbled to know I appear on her blogroll *blush*.

So, when she indicated that she'd chosen me to participate in the Tell Me About Yourself Award, I was pleased, a little speechless, and wondering how in the world I was going to make myself sound like the intriguing Jane she thinks I am *laughing*. I'm not intriguing! I'm just...JANE in my infinite wisdom.

However, here are my 7 Things About Jane You Wish You'd (Never) Known:

1) I'm ambidextrous. I mention this because, until Sunday, not even Acr0nym knew. I take it for granted and am surprised when people thinks it's some wildly impressive talent. *shrug* I dunno. I just can do everything with either hand. Now, I do write almost exclusively righthanded although I can write with my left hand - just not upside down as Lex recently discovered. Nearly everything else - eating, bowling, applying mascara - I predominantly use my left hand but am equally as good (or, in the case of bowling, as bad) with either hand.

2) I am decidedly pre-maturely grey. My first grey hair was discovered by Carrie Wunder as we were lined up on the playground of Fort Caspar Elementary School in 1982. I was 10. And I will never forgive that cute little redheaded, be-freckled girl for announcing it in her outside voice to everyone else in the class. "YOU HAVE A GREY HAIR!!!!!" Subsequently, I dyed my hair for the first time when I was 15 the afternoon of my first rock concert - Anthrax and KISS. It was eggplant or aubergine. I didn't stop dying my hair - I've had it nearly every color included in the Crayola Deluxe 64-Pack - until I was in my 30's. At which point I decided I just didn't care for the expense of the upkeep. Now I have great streaks of silver and many people, upon our first meeting, exclaim, "OH! I love your hair!" Take THAT, Carrie Wunder!!! I have grey hair!

3) Back in the day, I was an award-winning pianist. Let me qualify this...that's when I was in my mid-teens. I haven't played really since I attended a summer-long elite summer camp for musicians and discovered that, while I was top notch back in Wyoming, I was a no one among child prodigies - and I met an awful lot of child prodigies that summer. Additionally, while I was concert mistress for the city-wide youth orchestra in Casper, WY, among the elite, I was 2nd violin LAST CHAIR. I didn't even make the camp choir. At that point, I called a cease and desist on all attempts at creating music. Ever since, I've questioned my talents and my abilities...including (perhaps especially) writing. Except...now I know I do have talent - it may not be as developed as, say, Livvy's Life, but I haz it. And I don't have to be the greatest writer of all time! No. I have to just keep writing, developing, risking myself and my talents because that's what I was born to do. It is me - represented, edited, published or not. Music was me too. But I gave up on it when I knew I would never be the best. Shame on me.

4) I love to read. I read voraciously every day. But, especially as I've grown older, I mainly read what I've already read. Reading is my comfort food - like cheese. At the end of my day, I rarely want to be challenged by something new. Instead, I want to curl up with a favorite character - preferably one who appears throughout a series - because they are my oldest friends. For instance, Anne of Green Gables is my dearest love. She is my all-time favorite literary character (and for someone who refuses to pick a favorite, that's truly saying something extraordinary). I strive to be like her. She is the reason I long to visit Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. But there is also Frodo Baggins and Kay Scarpetta and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Lucy Pevensie and Harry Potter and Josephine March and Nancy Drew. They are beloved. And I read them, at least, once every 2 years.

5) I haven't had television channels since 2001. I couldn't afford both high-speed internet and television then so I chose internet and I gave up television. To replace TV, I listened to hours upon hours of National Public Radio, Public Radio International, American Public Media, and the BBC while I surfed the internet and wrote vast tomes to a number of penpals (some in prison) and to my personal journal. I do not, under any stretch of the imagination, regret this decision. While there are a few television shows I am, at least, aware of since then, there are very few who garner my attention and only at the request of friends and benefactors. Frankly, I'm much happier not being a slave to television. Right now, at this moment, other than the clack-clack-clack of the keyboard keys and the whir of my ever-present fan and the ambient noises of Lex's forays into the kitchen, my house is completely silent. This is a good thing.

6) This blog, Jane In Her Infinite Wisdom, is mirrored at another URL - Jane Is a Mean Horrible Bitch. This started out as a joke between me and Lex because, in his opinion at least, there is nothing further from the truth. I am not mean...pretty much ever. He is convinced, even when he knows I'm feeling mean, that I am sincerely nice and, more importantly, gentle. Conceptually, Jane Is a Mean Horrible Bitch was supposed to be a themed website - like LOLcats or Texts From Last Night. It was SUPPOSED to be a website full of pictures of people cowering in every state of bloodied gore and me standing over them laughing. Except...um...I can't actually get people to cower before me. Mostly, people giggle when I scowl. Regardless, modchen, upon hearing the website treatment, bought the domain for me and re-directed it to Jane In Her Infinite Wisdom until I was ready to do something with it. I feel guilty that we've done nothing with it beyond acting as a mirror. Except...at least one person out there thinks I'm A) a mean horrible bitch and B) worth reading because they continue to access my blog through that url. Weird? Uh huh. Paranoia invoking? Uh huh.

7) I ran out of intriguing stuff so I asked Lex, "If you had to pick one thing, one thing that describes me, that maybe not everyone knows, what would it be?"

He said, " You are wise beyond words. You might not think so. Maybe everybody knows so. But, when I think of you, the very first thing I think of when I think of my Jane is that you are wise...beyond measure."

*tears*

I'm supposed to pick 15 other bloggers who I'd choose to tell me, in return, 7 things about themselves. I can't pick 15 people because every single person who is reading this would be my pick. So...if you're so inclined, would you tell me 7 things not everyone knows about you? It would mean an awful lot...

Via blog, e-mail, phone call, Facebook post. Tell me. I want to know YOU. Yes, you. Because you. Sincerely. I want to know you. I promise. I pinky swear. YOU.

11 comments:

TangledLou said...

You are my second favorite Jane! Ambidextry is sexy. (I just made up that word, but I think we should have T-shirts made up.) Lex sounds like good people.

Just Jane said...

That's totally t-shirt worthy! I'd wear it for sure :).

Lucy said...

I love this posts! I don't like doing them but I love reading them, it is fun to learn more and more about the person you are connecting with and even though you get to know them through their writing sometimes it is fun when the writer is forced to be a little more forthright or straightforward but I think that is hard for us writers, we tend to like to show ourselves through our stories, feeling and perspectives, to have to put it 'out there' seems to be hard.
It is funny that you think nothing of being ambidextrous,trust me, you wouldn't want me to do anything with my left hand LOL
Pretty cool, no television, I am a bad television junkie, and you are right it is junk, I can't tell you why I watch LOL

Anonymous said...

First off - Congratulations! Eee! Awards! :D

Secondly, I love these kind of posts. I like these little windows into people's heads. Because people are nifty. I mean, part of the reason I write is to make more people without the messy pregnancy/child-rearing/coming up with more college money thing.

Thirdly...OMG, I'm on the blogroll of a keen person! Thank you ma'am. :)

(This comment is apparently to see how many exclamation points I can use. The answer? So! Many!)

Just Jane said...

HA! Not only are you on the blogroll but you're in the section "People I Pretend I Know" - it's a highly coveted section ;)

ElizabethSheryl said...

Thank you!!! No one ever picks me so I'm taking the open invite! I still watch tv via Netflix and Hulu.com but I chose Internet over tv and it is great!

Anonymous said...

First of all, thank you for all the mega-sweetness and the linky love! I'm glad to see that you're honored and not creeped by my affection for you and your writing because I read you once and immediately thought, "YES!" That sort of reaction can either mean you've found a faithful reader who feels a genuine connection to your words or that a huge weirdo has just happenstanced upon your blog.

Oh, and I'm so jealous that you've been able to stick out the graying transition. I tried. Really, really tried. Almost 2 years ago, I went in and told the stylist to "cut off everything that has hair color on it."

She looked at me like I might have been drinking and said, "Everything?!"

Yep. The goal was to learn to love my corkscrew-curly hair (I do!) and also to love the gray. After a few weeks, I couldn't stand the freaking gray (short, uber-curly, and gray pretty mush screams 'elderly librarian' and I wasn't digging that) so I started coloring it again, but only with the stuff that supposedly washes out after about a dozen shampoos (it doesn't).

This spring, I solemnly swore to stop all hair coloring, and went no-sulfate, no-parabens, no-silicone, natural. I let inches and inches of gray grow in and I tried really hard to love it. I absolutely love that natural look that some women pull off--all flowy and naturey. On them. Not on me.

Last month, I went in and handed over the VISA. Gray be gone ain't cheap.

Anonymous said...

Jane, I just read the 7 things about you we didn't know, and I for one appreciate you letting us in to know you. You are definitely a most impressive lady, and I am so very glad to have made your acquaintance, and to now call you "friend."

~Virginia

Masked Mom said...

My mother had a wide lock of gray hair right in the front of her otherwise jet black hair from the time she was 13. She went back and forth for years about dying it or not. In the mid-seventies, she was in a natural phase and working in a fast food restaurant when a customer said, "I love your hair. Where'd you get it frosted?"

And my mom said, "Mother Nature."

The woman said she'd never heard of that salon and wanted to know where it was located.

alienbody said...

Well, now you done it. You went and made yourself more awesome than I thought possible (pfft...not really, I knew you had oodles of it in ya). But you are, wicked awesome.

As for me...um...nope, I got nutin'. Thanks for sharing, I love...LOVE...reading 'facts' about people.

Unknown said...

Glad I found this post! Your favorite reads are eerily like some of my favorite reads. Reading is sometimes the only thing that gets me through.
Maybe I'll do a post with 7 things about me?
Jane is wise. Oh yes, she is.