THE EIGHTH FICTION

"Take . . . picture . . . of . . . goat." That has been on my TO DO list for a couple of days now. Truly. Had to have a visual aid for certain of the snippets and, believe it or not, there is a little makeshift farm in our neck of the suburbs. With goats. And chickens and cows and firewood for sale. So the plan was to stop by and snap a quick pic of one of the goats when it was grazing near the fence. Never did catch one, so I had to come up with another idea. But I digress . . .

What about the bogus fact?? The red herring?? The bullcrap story, for Pete's sake??!!

Here we go:

There are indeed four siblings in my family. We were a playful lot and still act completely goofy and immature on the rare occasion when we are all four together. And I am a natural redhead, courtesy of my paternal grandfather. A couple of my cousins, and my second brother's three kids, inherited the trait as well. Gotta love genetics.

The water phobia is, alas, also true. The instructors apparently subscribed to the "sink or swim" theory. Works in boot camp, maybe, but not with scared little ones. And this was WAY before the days of swimmies. So there was no easing into it for me. I made up for lost time, though, once I did finally learn to swim. Spent many a summer at the swim club as a teenager diving for quarters and playing Marco Polo. Those were the days.

Cat allergy story . . . true. Very true. Sorry, Sam and Lynne. Thank God, I have somewhat outgrown the severity of the allergy. When younger, I would go into histimic overdrive with just a couple of whiffs. Now, I am good for a little while, as long as I don't hold them and pet them too much. Which is difficult not to do. They are so darn cute afterall.


As much as I love books, art, chocolate, I absolutely would perish without music. It is my life blood. Music moves me, inspires me, provokes me, soothes me. It is magical and I cannot imagine life without it. I would not want to be without books, art, or chocolate, but my soul would wither without music.



The Gerard Butler crush is alive and well. Very well. He even made it to one of my ATCs. Shame, shame. Although . . . I just returned from seeing "Australia", and I may give him up for Hugh Jackman. Lordy. Many quality characteristics in that man. :-)


As for the goat story . . . it really did happen. No, not at a petting zoo !!! One would think. Yes, Diana, I was a cheekie kid, but the goat encounter actually did not occur as a wee one. It was much later, as a teenager. A neighbor friend had a horse. The horse stall was on a large piece of property and other farm-ish animals roamed about. My friend wanted to clean the horse stall but the damn goat was in the way, slowly munching and grazing on the horse's hay. I, in my teenage stupidity, thought it would be a simple matter of shooing the goat out of the stall, much in the same way you shoo a dog or cat out of a room. My mistake. Goats are territorial. He did not appreciate my instrusion, so he stopped in mid-chew, lowered his head, and came after me. He ran half-heartedly . . . I hauled ass. Glad to say, I escaped unscathed. I now practice goat avoidance.


I really wanted to post a goat photo, but as I said, the goats didn't cooperate. Seems to be a recurring theme for me. So, I found a photo on Flickr that gives you the idea of what a goat encounter is like. Emily Chastain so generously gave me permission to use one of her fabulous photos. The blogger gremlins are at it because for the life of me, I cannot get the thing to upload. So take a little side trip to her photostream and have a look. What a hoot. GREAT shot.

By now, you have probably been doing process of elimination. Which leaves just one fact as the white lie. Yep, you got it . . . Number 5. Gotcha !! Never broke my pinky finger playing flag football with my brother. Don't know how, but for all our roughhousing as kids, I never broke a bone. **Knock wood.** There were a couple of times when I certainly SHOULD have fractured something. But I made it through childhood without a single visit to the emergency room. I was very, very lucky.

So, now what??!!! No one guessed!!! Ack!!!! Since you all were such good sports, I've decided to give away the goodies regardless. I used a very sophisticated system to choose a winner: I wrote each name down on a slip of paper, made two pools, shook each, then randomly drew one slip from each group. The winner from the tagged group: KATE !!!! Yay !!! And the winner from the non-tagged group: RENEE !!! Double yay !!! I'll mail the packages out this weekend.

Thank you all so much for taking the time to play along. And most of all, thanks for visiting with me. I truly appreciate it.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, all !!!!

Ciao for now.

Shelly

TAGGED . . . WITH A TWIST

Ahhhhhhhh . . . you thought the award was all there was to it, did you??? Not so fast. This is the really fun part.

Dayna not only bestowed me with merit, she also paintballed me. Tagged me. So, as I understand it, I am to do the following:
1. Post the rules on your blog.
2. Write seven random things about yourself.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post.
4. Pass on the tag to seven others.


Two things before I go any further:

1. I am a bit of a private person, so there will be no great reveals here. No rattlings in the skeleton closet. (Alas, I am dull . . . I have no skeletons.) Maybe just a couple of innocuous facts . . . and one picture for nostalgia sake. (Yep, that's me up there.)


2. I am not good at following rules. So I am going to take the liberty and add a twist to the game. And it goes like this:


In addition to the seven actual facts, there is one additional fact that is totally bogus. A red herring. Something I made up. Hence, you see eight facts listed. The first of you whom I have tagged to correctly guess, and post as a comment, which fact you identify as complete bullcrap, will win a nice little goodie package. And I give good goodie. If there are any other readers who wish to guess, too, please feel free to do so. First one of the non-tagged readers to correctly guess will get a little ephemera surprise, too. Promise. So read carefully and give it a go . . .


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Here are my personal snippets:

1. I am a natural redhead. Wanted blonde hair instead when I was a kid, but now would not change it for the world. Just hope my hair dresser can match the exact shade when it comes time to color it. :-)

2. Only girl amongst four siblings. My two older brothers are quite a bit older and watched over me as a little girl. My younger brother is only a year and a half younger and pummeled, wrestled, teased, slapped and ran me in the ground as a little girl. All in a good way. As adults, we are as close as two people can possibly be.

3. Allergic to cats. Nothing against cats personally, but my respiratory system does not share the same sentiment.

4. Terrified of the water when I was young. Blame the evil swim lesson instructors for throwing me into the deep end of the pool. I overcame my fear, however, and learned to swim, but not until I was thirteen years old. Today, I will swim and snorkel without hesitation. But I haven't mustered the huevos to try scuba diving.

5. Broke my left pinky finger playing flag football with my brother and his friends at age twelve. You do not realize how important your pinky finger is until it is splinted up and out of commission.

6. Have a huge celebrity crush on Gerard Butler. If I were to meet him in person, I could not be held responsible for my actions.

7. Once was chased by a goat. He did not appreciate my close proximity. Fortunately, it was a short chase and neither of us were harmed in the end.

8. Could not live without music. If I were stranded on an island, and were told I could only choose one thing - books, music, art, chocolate - without hesitation, I would choose music.

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In order to keep things simple, I tag the same great bunch of ladies whom I nominated for the award in my previous post:

Diana
Kate
Lynne
Anita
Sheree
Viola
Lorri


Stacey, a.k.a. ArtSnark, isn't tagged because she got tagged last week. (Don't worry, Stacey, I'm still game.)

Will keep my eye out for any responses. Hope you have a bit of fun with it.

Ciao for now.

Shelly