Eleven Questions

Marcia Hoehne tagged me for the Eleven Questions game. Here are the rules as she relayed them:

• Write 11 random things about yourself.
• Answer the 11 questions given.
• Write 11 new questions.
• Tag someone else. Maybe 11 someone elses, if you can.

Here we go, then:

11 Things You Never Expected about Faith (or maybe you did)!

1) Although I think I always knew in my heart of hearts that I wanted to be a Wife/Mother/Writer, I toyed with the ideas of various careers throughout my youth. Some of the more serious ones were: etymologist (I wanted to work for Merriam-Webster), entomologist, ornithologist (specifically, I wanted to work with raptor rescue groups), astronomist, artist, actress, singer, editor, and nun.

2) I have a passion for homemade things. Especially when I can make them from soft, handspun wool.

3) I love diagramming sentences.

4) I hate having nothing to do with my hands. I knit while I watch movies, cook while I teach my daughters, type while I nurse the baby. The primary exception to this rule is reading, because if there is a book in my hands they are content.

5) I’d love to have ten children or so. I grew up as the third of five and we all envied “the big families.”

6) I re-read Anne of Green Gables every spring.

7) My favorite flowers are forget-me-nots.

8) In college, I performed in and directed a crazy awesome musical version of Beowulf for a final project in our Honors Seminar. (Yeah, we pretty much had the coolest professors ever.) My brilliant, bona fide genius friend Bridget wrote the music, adapted from Gilbert and Sullivan tunes. I opened the play to the showstopper number, “A Meadhouse Minstrel I.” (We all got A’s.)

9) I say “pop,” not “soda.”

10) If I was a boy, I would have been named Tobias.

11) I am really enjoying this post, because making lists made the list of my top ten favorite things to do...

Now here are my answers to Marcia’s questions:

1. Your house is on fire and you can run out with one thing. (Your family and pets are safe, and you are guaranteed to get out.) What do you grab?

The painting my husband gave me on our first date. It’s a copy of the Madonna and Child from Caravaggio’s Rest on the Flight to Egypt. While it’s not the best thing he ever painted, it means the most to me.

2. Health nut or junk foodie?

Somewhere between the two. I like junk food occasionally, but our favorite foods around here are healthy things like fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, and chocolate. (Yes, chocolate is definitely a health food.)

3. What's your favorite form of exercise?

Dancing! Baseball is a close second, but I haven’t had the chance to play in a while. Mostly I get my workouts from chasing toddlers around the house and yard.

4. What's the worst job you can imagine having?

It’s a tie between leech-catcher and coal miner (I’m a little claustrophobic). Or maybe politician.

5. Have you ever broken a bone? How?

Yes, once; and like most of my injuries, by being stupid. I was 8 months pregnant with my second daughter and decided to join 2-year-old Lucy on the swing set. The rusted chains broke under my weight, as did my tailbone a split second later. Baby Zoe ended up being fine, but poor Lucy was afraid to go on swings for a long time.

6. If you could go back to college now, would you change your major? From what to what?

Hmmm....I think so. I double majored in Early Childhood Education and Spanish, which I really enjoyed. But my last semester I decided on a whim to take an acting class which I loved so much that I wished I’d been a theater major all along. I learned more important lessons through acting than in any other class I had taken.

7. Green thumb? Black thumb? Somewhere in between?

In between. I suspect I may actually have a thumb as green as they come, but it’s been pretty busy helping the rest of my hand hold babies lately, so the only thing completely thriving in my garden right now is the grass that crept in.

8. What's the best book you've read in the last two months, on any topic?

Oh, hard question. I just told a friend last week that I’ve gotten really lucky in my reading choices these past couple months, as practically everything I pick up seems to be amazing! But I think I have to go with Laura Amy Schlitz’s newest (soon-to-be-released) book Splendors and Glooms. It’s a Victorian Gothic middle grade that was at once wonderfully Dickensian and incredibly fresh--meaningful, beautiful, thrilling--just one of those perfect books.

9. What's the hugest, gooiest, most fabulous dessert you can remember eating?

Mmmmm....they blend together in my mind. My oldest sister Natalie is the most incredible baker, and she filled my childhood with mounds of sweet goodness. There was this one caramel pecan pie...

10. What's your favorite writing tip?

I don’t have a direct quote, but it came from Eileen Spinelli. She was answering the question of how she managed to write while raising five children, and she said she wrote “in the cracks of the day.” It works!

11. What's the stupidest writing tip you've ever heard?

“You have to start with action!” No, you don’t. Please don’t start with action for the sake of action. It never works. Start with tension.

And now for 11 new questions:

1) What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
2) What book do you wish you were a character in?
3) White, dark, or milk chocolate?
4) Would you rather be a coal miner or a skyscraper window washer?
5) If you were an American in the late 1700’s, which side would you have taken in the Revolution?
6) What writing tool would it be hard for you to live without?
7) What song best describes you or the way you see the world?
8) What’s your favorite first sentence from a book?
9) If you could get on a plane for a month long vacation tomorrow, where would you go?
10) Do you outline your stories?
11) Would you rather live in a palace by the sea or a cottage in the woods?

As far as the tagging is concerned, here are a few I don't think I've ever tagged before:

Jennifer Wagner
Anne Marie Schlueter
Heather Day Gilbert
Melissa Sarno

If anyone else wants to be play--please consider yourself tagged. And if you don't feel like playing, that's fine too. :)

Whew, that made for a long post. Thanks for sticking around!