Thursday, February 15, 2007

tagged!

I was just about to write about yesterday's snow day, but then I got tagged by tinatheseamonster.

The rules are as follows:
1. someone tags you,
2. you post five things about yourself that you haven’t already mentioned on your blog,
3. you tag people you’d like to know more about.


1. I'm not a citizen of the U.S. I have a "permanent resident alien" card that looks very 007. It has my thumb print and photo on the front and microfilm under the lamination on the back.
I was actually born is Scotland. My parents moved to the states when I was about 7. We used to go back to Scotland every summer for three months to visit our family, but after my parents divorced we weren't able to get back as often.

2. (on the same topic, kinda)In college, when I was about 20, I chose to miss my final exams so that I could visit my grandfather one last time before he passed away (lung cancer/ non-smoker).
I arrived just in time. He passed away a few hours after I got to his hospice. I thought it was extremely wonderful that he was able to hold on until we could say "good-bye".
I still wish I had hugged him more, but he was very frail and I was told that the tumors would hurt him if I tried to hug him closely. I still think I should have hugged him anyways.
He is the only person close to me that has ever died.
I didn't return to Scotland again until about 2 years ago, 9 years later. I was 5 months pregnant and my cousin, Matthew, was getting married.
It's amazing how bonds you create as children transcend time. I see my cousins rarely, but it always feel comfortable and normal when we do get together.

3. I love being social and meeting new people, but I HATE making sales calls! I really think FocoLoco could be much more than it is if I wasn't such a weenie about sales calls. I would rather poke pins in my eyes!

4. My first real job was as a telemarketer. I was 16. It sucked, big time.
People yelled at me. Sometimes you'd ask for someone who had died. Sometimes you'd get stuck on the phone with very lonely elderly people and then the manager would snatch the phone away and still try to squeeze a few bucks out of them. It sucked.
I worked in a tiny, smokey office with about 9 booths that all faced the center of the room where our manager stood, chain-smoking, greasy and dripping with sweat. This guy always had huge yellow pit stains on all of his shirts.
Everyone that worked there were teenage girls except Vicki, the middle-age, amputee that was always trying to sell us her meds....I'm totally not making this up.
This job, I'm quite sure, has an awful lot to do with my sales call phobia.

5. I am obsessed with knitting. My mother taught me this summer. I have 2 suitcases full of yarn. I crave free-time for knitting. I am almost finished with my first sweater, a tiny red/black striped one with a jolly rodger pattern on the front. I really hope it fits my son when I am finished.

okay, so now who to tag...
andrea, jen, marie...I'll have to think of 2 more later.

3 comments:

tinaseamonster said...

i, too, saw my grandfather right before he died. he was so afraid. thanks for sharing this.

Editor said...

oh,wow...that totally reminds me of another time I saw someone dying.
I was in the hospital, basically for an anxiety attack, which i thought was a heart attack.
the old woman next to me was dying and only her grand daughter was by her side.
she said that her family thought she was silly to be there because her grandmother was so old anyways and there was work to be done.
they were buddhist and didn't believe that anything happened after you died..or something.
she was translating what her grandmother was moaning.
she kept saying that she was scared and didn't want to go. she saw horsemen coming to take her and she didn't want to go.
this scared the crap out of me.
i'm not deeply religious, but i do believe in some sort of universal consciousness.
sometimes i hope i can find peace in my final moments on earth.
sometimes i think i want to fight tooth and nail not to go, like the old lady did.
it certainly sounds like a different experience than the fluffy cloudy heaven i always expected as child.
not that i was ever placated by that imagery either.
"heaven. heaven is a place, where nothing, nothing ever happens."-Talking Heads-
my thoughts exactly!

Reetsyburger said...

I was tagged? I didn't know!