A me-meme

So I am totally excited to show up on someone's tagged list for a meme (Thanks Small Town Small times!).

However, I don't have many folks I'd tag. Many of the bloggers I read are Big Name Bloggers With Thousands of Readers. But I also read some smaller blogs and I think they best deserve these kinds of...awards. I actually hesitated to tag anyone because WHAT IF I LEFT SOMEONE OFF? but I decided I'd pick three. Three is a nice number. I was beaten to the punch on Chocolate and Whine (feel better soon!). For now I'll put up a few of the folks that I have enjoyed reading even if I don't always leave comments:

Amie over at Trading the Forest for the City
Rhea over at Texas Word Tangle
Sweet taters- my best friend and the only friend from before college that I have kept in constant touch with.

Next I’m supposed share seven of my personality traits. Let's see...

1. I am a trooper. It's first to pop in my mind because the other day one of my co-workers here at BIG INC was remarking how I am a trooper. Apparently the fact that I have been keeping things together, pulling through on assignments, and helping out where I can even though I'm pregnant makes me a trooper. (It was nice to hear her say that because it's easy to criticize myself and think I'm doing poorly at keeping things together and pulling through). Actually, E has said this about me since we met. In times of stress and crisis, I tend to be pretty calm. I've got this idea that it's better to react with action first and emotion second.

2. I'm "precious" - complete with quotes. I was sharing with coworkers how I thought well into young adulthood that SOL was So out of luck, something I've mentioned here before. I was saying how being So out of luck just made more sense logically speaking. I guess sometimes my small town Southern and somewhat naive self makes an appearance. But it could also be that I smile a lot.

3. I am soft spoken. I am. I don't much like yelling, or raising my voice. This comes as a surprise to people who know my military background. I did get reprimanded a few times at basic for not being loud enough. And even got a demerit once because even though I was the "injured" person being carried on a stretcher, I wouldn't scream like the trainers wanted the injured people to do. Instead, since I had to make some sort of noise, I moaned about morphine, which led to the demerit... I just don't like to scream. Plus, the guys doing the carrying appreciated that I didn't scream.

4. I listen to country (that's sorta a trait, right?). When I first moved from Mass to Alabama, I HATED country music. But the thing is, it wasn't so much the music I hated. I think it was part of being new to the school, community, and frankly the culture (if you've never been in the South, there is a different culture there). By the end of the first year we lived there, I didn't hate country music but it wasn't my first choice. By the time I graduated college it represented around 40% of my music. Now I am more likely to be listening to country as I walk around NYC than anything else. I sure love Reba's voice and one day hope to go see her live.

5. I'm creative. Even though during my pregnancy I haven't been able to tap into the creative side of my brain, I am usually working on several creative things at a time. Sweet taters and I have been writing a story together since....forever (and if we could just get the last bit done!!! but life keeps interfering). I enjoy painting, which you've seen here and here, though there are others that now I'm thinking about it I'd love to share. I like to take photographs, though I am not nearly as good as Stephanie is. (BTW, I added a label to posts that have images of NYC, aply called images from NYC.)

6. I am not one for confrontation. If I feel like something (like an opinion) isn't worth the effort to defend, I won't bother. For instance, I regularly hold my tongue when the topic of the military comes up. Some people like to talk about it as though they know more than me or E, even though they never went through basic or lived that life.

7. I'm flexible. I wasn't always. When I was in high school I had a few anxiety attacks because things just weren't going the way they were supposed to. And once I remember crying at the dinner table because my dad made a new recipe for the third night in a row and all I really wanted was something I KNEW I'd like (he'd made some amazingly delicious crabcakes, and as it turned out I do like them). How did I go from that to flexible? Well, mostly I learned to be flexible in the military. The saying in the Air Force is "Flexibility is the key to Air Power" but I learned that flexibility is the key to happiness. When I stopped worrying about how things were supposed to go, and started going with the flow, I was much happier. During the short time I taught, the school was such a cluster administratively that I learned flexibility was the key to sanity. When I got hired here at BIG INC, during my interviews I was all about how flexible I am, but then I took the personality test and it came back off the chart in structure and planning. My boss was teasing me about it and I said, sure you can be flexible and like planning. You just make being flexible part of the plan.

phew, that's enough about me.