7 Things Meme

Cindi, at Over The Rainbow, tagged me with this meme. I am supposed to come up with seven random facts/habits about me. Here goes....(and believe me when I say THIS WAS HARD. I just am not very secretive about my life.:))

1) My mother's first cousin was Miss Michigan--way back in the 1950s. She also was a semi-finalist in the Miss America pageant. Because of her status as a semi-finalist, she got several (small) movie roles. She left 'the business' because she couldn't stand the phoniness. Today, she holds dual Finnish/American citizenship and lives full time in Finland. She is one of only two members of my family that I regularly have contact with.

2) I have never put gas in a vehicle. (I have stated this before, but there is a reason for me to mention it again.) However, I am the only one who hangs pictures--or anything else--on the walls in our house. I also put together most of the 'assemble-it-yourself' furniture that we have bought. If we had more power tools, I know I could do most any remodeling necessary in a house.

3) My high school boyfriend never married. I believe his mother blamed me for that. In some way, it is flattering to think so, but I do believe his drug and alcohol habits had more to do with it than I did.

4) A few posts back I mentioned the fact that my father was in the hospital for a year when I was very young. He was thought to have tuberculosis and was isolated until he had surgery. He had an ulcerated lung and not TB. I am the reason this all came about and I have lived my entire life feeling guilty about it. When I had to have my TB test/shot in kindergarten, I was so terrified of the needle that I pulled away. Of course, I showed a positive reaction and then my entire family was tested for TB. My mother also tested positive. (We both had been exposed, but never had TB.) My father was the one to get put into the hospital--my mother and I took medications for a year. I KNOW my mother blamed me for my father's hospitalization and it has been a huge burden I am finally overcoming. Even though I remember hearing my mother say it was my fault, she denies it to this day. Just another reason for me to not feel very good about her. (She was VERY young at the time and said things without thinking. It happens. I just wish she would own up to it.)

5) As everyone knows, I am a HUGE hockey fan and an even HUGER Red Wings fan. But...when I first started to watch hockey, I was a fan of the Boston Bruins. Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Derek Sanderson, Gerry Cheevers...couldn't get any better than that! I fell away from watching hockey for some time and came back as a Red Wings fan--because I couldn't go against the rest of the household. :)

6) The company my husband works for bought out the company he started at. The original company sponsored a photo contest for the employees and their families every year. I won the contest twice. My first win came with a picture I took of my niece at her birthday. She was nose-to-nose with the clown that was there, staring in his eyes. It was a once-in-a-lifetime shot. The second picture I won with was of a squirrel eating from our bird feeder. The extraordinary thing about this was: the squirrel was hanging onto the roof of the feeder by his back claws and was eating upside down. It was a pretty cool shot.

7) I was once a dental assistant. That isn't very unusual, but the work I did WAS. I never had any formal training, but I took x-rays, took impressions, instructed people on the proper care of their teeth, evaluated their teeth cleaning, did some hygienist-type cleaning, and applied temporary fillings. I broke the law by putting in temporary fillings--and maybe by doing some of the other stuff, too. Thankfully, I left the practice before it was busted.

There you have it...7 things I don't believe I ever mentioned in this blog before. It was one of the hardest memes I have ever done, so I will not tag anyone specifically. I hope everyone tries it, though--puts your brain to work for a while, that's for sure!