Thanks, Danielle!

Posted by beth on September 26, 2008

I had fun with this, but if you don’t like it, blame Danielle. It’s not like you can do anything to her. She lives way over yonder on the other side of the world. It’s SPRING there, even. And it’s not like you can just go into SPRING and get her. It’s a whole other season. I dare you to even try.

How well can you…

cook? I have to say…I’m pretty good, but I don’t do it that often because I don’t plan ahead well enough to have ingredients on hand. I generally get hungry, decide what I want, go out to purchase ingredients, decide I’m too hungry to wait until I’ve cooked whatever it is I have the ingredients for, and swing by the Taco Bell drive-thru on the way home from the grocery store. On the upside, I have those ingredients for later. And THAT is the only reason I know I can cook at all.

sew? Ummm…hello?

clean? Hahaha. Yeah, let’s not discuss that. Well, ok, we can. I like to put the dishes in the dishwasher as I use them. Then, when it’s full, I like to run it. But after that, things start to break down. I don’t like to unload the dishwasher, so then I can’t put new dirties in, and they just pile up in the sink. My bathroom sink, however, is always clean. I wipe it down every night after I wash my face. Generally, although things may not be dirty, they are just strewn. I strew. I’m a strewer. It’s not unsanitary. It’s just cluttered.

sing? Like a Vienna Choir Boy

play an instrument? I can play the guitar…kind of. And I used to be able to play the piano. Back me up on this, please, somebody, because anyone who’s heard me lately would never believe it.

write? I mean. I like to write. I love it, actually. And people tell me I do it well, although that didn’t really start until college. Up until that time, I didn’t think I was very good at it, probably because my style didn’t fit so well into the writing mold required by standardized tests. Even when I took the GRE (after I’d realized I could write), I got a pretty bad score on the writing portion. So unappreciated.

read? I can read at a post-graduate level. Oh yeah. I’m that good.

paint or draw? THIS is worth laughing about. I sometimes try to use illustrations to define words or concepts to my students, and all animals come out looking like animals other than the animals they were intended to be. And all people are stick figures unless they need to be wearing clothing or have a chest cavity for some reason. The one thing I can draw kind of well is a big ol’ plantation house. When I taught level 1, we would talk about house vocabulary, and I would have them draw and write about their dream house. Their dream houses would inevitably be modest ranches – maybe a split-level if they were really ambitious. But mine… Mine was always a two-story, white house with columns, a wrap-around porch, a balcony, a porch swing, a bay window, two chimneys, and a gigantic old oak tree in the front yard. Not that I’ve thought about it that much.

tell stories? Well, I needed a dresser, and we needed a coffee table for our living room, so we set out one Saturday to scour the Goodwills of the Triangle in search of these items. But they are large items, you see, and we were in my car, which would not accommodate them and us, so we stopped by Lauren’s parents’ house to borrow their truck. Then we went back to two Goodwills to make/pick up our purchases before driving back across town to our house. Lauren, needing to return the truck to her parents, headed over to their house for dinner, but it’s quite a haul from there to here, and her mom didn’t want to drive her back over to our place.

Lucky for her, I was going to the airport that night to pick up VA, and the airport is MUCH closer to their place, so her mom just dropped her off with me at the Sheetz down the street from RDU, we picked up VA (after about a two-hour delay), and headed back into town to drop VA at her apartment before returning home (finally).

So we were in the car with VA, and she asked something along the lines of, “Lauren, what made you decide to come to the airport too?” And I proceeded to launch into the whole story of the day, starting with, “Well, I needed a dresser…” which Lauren found REALLY amusing. She said she probably would have just said something like, “Oh, I was at my parents’ house, and I didn’t have my car, so my mom just brought me to meet Beth instead of driving me 30 minutes across town.”

I said that was completely illogical to me, and that it only made sense to start at the beginning of the story regardless of whether or not the complete story is necessary information. So I don’t know if I’m good at telling stories. But I really like (or perhaps feel compelled) to tell them.

persuade? I’m probably really good at convincing people to do things they want to do deep down but feel they shouldn’t do for some silly reason of responsibility or societal expectation. Oh yeah. I’m an instigator.

resist those who persuade you? Same thing. If I want to do something, I am easily persuaded to do it. But if I do not want to do something, I am unmovable.

dress? I don’t dress. I OWN.

decorate a room? It takes me a long time to get a room just right, but I take great joy in seeing it come together. I love finding old fixer-upper stuff at the flea market, etc. to give a room a little extra something. I also like seeing completely mismatched things come together to complete a room. I find that very beautiful for some reason.

decorate a cake? I’m not very good at cake decorating. I leave that to Brookie. But I did make one spectacular “Wave of Babies” cupcake. And I am a champion cake-eater!

parallel park? On a good day, I’m a pro. But on a bad day, I may as well not even try. I just can’t get close enough to the curb sometimes.

dance? What? You mean you have yet to see me to “The Grind” or “Sexy Up/Down” or any square dance moves?????? Oh, friend, you are MISSING. OUT.

swim? I’m a Pisces and a once-licensed SCUBA diver. You be the judge.