15 Things – Posting Challenge – Day 1

The official instructions are to post on Day 01- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself.

I warned you I’d fudge the pictures.

This is a picture of me from several years ago. Digging, of course. The blue dye in my hair had faded to a rather pleasant green, I am, as always, barefoot as possible, and I am on a mission. Aside from gaining weight, not much has changed.

I’ve done these “15 facts” things before, and I always seem to say the same things. So I’m going to try to stretch my wings on this one. Let’s see how I do.

1) I’m a Florida girl at heart. Not the soulless “Death’s Waiting Room” Florida has become, catering to the very expendable cash of people who realize they can’t take it with them, and who’s voting views look no further than the end of their ever shortening life spans. No, I’m a true Florida girl, one of the ones who can remember when Florida tourism advertised itself for the state’s natural beauty and not just tourist trap beaches and hotel pools. I am swamps and bugs, beach sand and sticker bushes, hurricanes and hundred degree weather, buzzards and eagles and hawks and ten types of cranes, I am antebellum trees with hanging moss, alligators and armadillos, bikinis and bare feet.

I am the living embodiment of the memory of the state, of the land, which is slowly dying as short sighted fools build in a place with no natural barriers to stop them. Florida was once not paved all up and down the coast to the point that the only way you knew you exited one city and entered the next was a sign telling you so. You didn’t find an air conditioner in every building, and old faces everywhere you looked. Florida has been consumed by people who exploit her worse than a five year old sex slave, and like that unfortunate child, they will use her until she dies. She is dying.

I secretly root for hurricanes with high property (not people) damage. I root for fires and floods, for the unsavory reputation of death to follow closely on the heels of her name. I want people to think twice before moving here. I want them to consider other warm places, Arizona, Texas, Alabama, or half the bloody South. I want those who only care about their next breathing day (young and old, mind), and who devoid the state of opportunity, of growth, of beauty, of any reason for youth to stay, of any help to the non-wealthy farmers and laborers who daily strive to make this a state worth living in to leave. I want them to find other homes and never return.

I want my state back.

2) I have very limited reading habits, which I’m told for a writer is suicide. I read sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and a (very) little bit of romance. I also read countless fun articles, news articles and blogs online, though I’m not sure how these officially classify.

I don’t so much read non-fiction as skim for what I need, and most straight fiction (aside from select humor) bores the crap out of me. I consider most suspense and westerns as “men’s fiction,” meaning they are fast in pace but often low in characterization. I also eventually quit reading mysteries for this reason–I was supposed to care about what was going on, but I didn’t. I feel obligated to struggle through classics, though I do admit a few of them are perennial favorites. Overall, though, the daily human experience holds little thrill for me–to me, I can look out a window and see it. It’s making the impossible seem real that turns me on, so that is what I read.

On the flip side, I do read voraciously.

3) I have a strange idea of beauty. I think lush green lands are very pretty, but…postcard pretty. Uninspiring. For beauty that shakes me to the core, give me miles and miles of miles and miles. The ocean’s vast emptiness, the unfolding desert, the middle of winter when the leaves are off the trees and you can finally see the land rolling away before you. I love skies that go on forever, rainstorms seen in the distance, sunsets and sunrises that brand the sky halfway into tomorrow. The beauty I seek doesn’t have to be harsh, but it should have grit.

Perfect beauty on people bothers me too. Give my a slightly asymmetrical face, a smile too wide or too crooked, some lines, crows feet, scars, a little bit of pudge. Dolls and statues are beautiful because in them we can create a human ideal. People are beautiful because of their flaws. Anyone without flaws is also without humanity, without the imprint life leaves on us all. They are pod people, and as such are to be avoided. And screw a media that says otherwise.

4) I have found the way to discourage people from reading things is to be verbose.  So if you want to publicize personal facts without having people actually read them, just talk a lot. (By the way, how you doing in this post so far?)

5) I’m double jointed to the point that sometimes things…spontaneously dislocate. I don’t know why, but my guess is I stretch the tendons or something just a little too far. Old age is gonna be fuuuuunnn…..

6) I like long hair on both men and woman, and I think the cultural push towards ever shorter hair is criminal. I will admit, there are people who look best in shorter hair, and even I prefer them that way, but I think it should be personal choice, not a cultural no-no. For both genders. I also think there is nothing unprofessional about well kept long hair on men or women, and that with all the other things we need to worry about, nitpicking someone for long locks is just plain petty.

7) I overcooked my toast and now it’s a briquette. Hey, it’s a thing….

8) I love writing, but I absolutely hate, hate, hate the process. This was something I held as a shameful secret for years. But then, much to my surprise, I discovered I was not the only one. Some people write shallowly, and you can tell. Others rip open hidden corners of their souls and struggle to get it on paper. How hard that struggle is, I think, depends on how good a grip you have on your inner demons and past nightmares, and as it turns out, a surprising number of people don’t have a grip that’s all that good.

To everyone who keeps on plugging away anyway, driven by muses with whips who chain you to a writing implement, I salute you. This should, in the end, be a “fun” thing, but I’m not sure it should ever be easy.

9) I want to have a pet skunk, a couple ferrets, breed Scottish Fold kittens, and own a greyhound, a Great Dane, and a small dog. My perfect household will be overrun with animals. And kids.

10) I once had a cockroach in my cleavage. No, I don’t feel like sharing that story today; I just told you to tease you.

11) I have a memory of something that happened before I was born. Not telling that story today either. Instead, I’ll just link it.



12) I’m a weirdness magnet. If something is going to go strange, I tend to be standing somewhere in the vicinity, if not at ground zero. Most of the time I’m just minding my own business when it happens, too.

Wait, you want examples? Don't ask for much, do you?

Well…two UFOs (not aliens, but flying objects with zero explanation behind them, I looked), an odd experience that I can only describe as a fairy encounter, several ghost-like encounters and one haunted house, shared dreams with an ex, and a few experiences to frightening to go into. Also, there was the time I got into an exclusive camp because I wrote on a wall (they weren’t mad and it wasn’t punishment, they were impressed), twice I was stranded on the road and helped (safely) by complete strangers, survived an accident that should have killed me, and a whole lot more. Seriously, my life makes no sense, and people who’ve lived with me can and will attest to this.

Thankfully, I have yet to make a door fall off a plane, though.

13) I like caves and underground spaces. I go into them even though I suffer a touch of claustrophobia and find them uncomfortable places to be. This may go back to that whole weird concept of beauty–I think they are marvelous. I also love exploring ruins for much the same reason.

14) I am a Southern eater to the core. Sweet tea, grits, fried catfish, greens, black-eyed peas, and all those other down-home foods are my nirvana. I have had fancy food, foreign food, and things so delicious they’ll make your toes curl, but offer me a choice between those things and cheese grits and the grits win every time. However, a good red curry is a fighting second place.

15) I did this for a year:



The falling down? I did lots of that, too.

It was how I got past a suicidal depression. Needless to say, I wasn’t much fun for my teammates, and I think they were happy to see me go. But it saved my life. I can’t do it again–too time intensive, it costs too much money, and then there’s the little matter of having blown out both my ankles–but I’m glad I did it. I wouldn’t take back the experience for the world.

Duty, DONE. Honestly, I’m not that interesting of a person, and some of my most interesting bits I don’t want to talk about right now anyway. Maybe I’ll revisit it next year and see if I have anything different to say.