In orbit

Some days you feel like good ol' Mother Earth, solid, grounded, and intuitive. Other days, you're Skylab, tired, broken, hurtling toward the dirt and making people on several continents duck, then wait for the boom. This has been a Skylab week, where my worries have become space junk circling around me, before we all go plunging to the ground, making a dent in some foreign country. Yesterday I hit a major writer's roadblock; the words simply would not come, even when I squeezed my head like a tube of toothpaste. Fast forward to last night's stress meltdown, and today's achy nerve hangover. Luckily, there's one bit of shiny brightness; I've been tagged by Wordsmith, and must concentrate on something other than the entire state of Ohio, and how best to describe it.

So, without further ado, here are the rules:

Link to the tagger and post these rules on your blog. Share five facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. Tag five people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. Random fact: I am left-handed, although no one has ever called me 'Lefty.' My left-handedness is a direct gift of individuality from my father, who passed away when I was eight. My first-grade teacher wanted to force me to become right-handed, and he said absolutely not. His grade-school teacher forced him to become a 'righty' by tying his left hand behind his back when he was a kid, and that experience made him stand up for me and my unique quirks. Thanks, Daddy.

2. Weird fact: I eat with chopsticks or plastic forks, because I really, really, really hate the sound of metal utensils scraping teeth. I do eat with regular forks, spoons and knives when we eat out, but I'm very careful.

3. Factoid: I have no children, but many pets, including cats, dogs, and one spider. I haven't dressed any of them in cute or humorous clothing.

4. Fact-a-chicka-boom-boom: I've always wanted to be a writer, except for a brief period in my teen years when I wanted to be a sex therapist. Actually, I wanted to write books like Dr. Joyce Brothers, so I guess my budding hormones just kicked the writer thing up a notch.

5. Factling: I used to attend UFO conferences, and collect story ideas. Really, this is one of the best ways to hit a sci-fi jackpot; just sit in the lobby and listen. Wait until you get to the car to take notes, though. It makes the attendees paranoid to see a lone person scribbling away in the corner.

Hmmm, who's left to tag? I tag Nita at Nita's Notes; Greg at A Cranky Engineer; Jen at Creatif; J.R. at Walksquiet (maybe he'll update his blog now!) and Jenn at Working Writer (since completing this helped me forget my worries for a while, hoping it'll distract her, too.)

I did it! Bwah-hah-hah-ha!