Ta! Dah! An Award!!!!!

A blog I recently discovered is entitled Mamawolf. It contains life lessons from a Mom, Teacher, and Citizen of the World. She has been kind enough to read my blog and to comment on it. I always feel great gratitude for those who choose to read my postings and to follow my blog. Thank you all. And please be sure and read Mamawolf’s blog today to discover seven fun things about her.

            Ta! Dah! Ta! Dah! Trumpets please—Mamawolf has honored me today with the Versatile Blogger Award. This is a delightful way to introduce you to several blogs I read that you may not have heard of yet. I say, “Yet,” because today I’m going to award each of these blogs a Versatile Blogger Award for being exceptional. The seven I’ve chosen deserve more readers. I hope you will visit them and will enjoy these enlightening, funny, supportive and inspirational bloggers as much as I do! Here they are:

                       

                        Flying into the Light

                        The Writing Life

                        SoulComfort’s Corner

                        Stalled at 12

                        Love.

                        Loving people with less

                        Marginal Considerations

Fr       The Rules after accepting the Versatile Blogger Award are as follows

•       Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post.

•       Share 7 things about yourself.

•       Pass this award along to several blogs you’ve recently discovered. 

Now here are seven things about myself that past postings haven’t revealed:

1. 1.     In September I will have been a vegetarian—not a vegan though—for thirty years. My favorite vegetable is eggplant. My favorite fruit is a peach. My favorite protein is a Boca burger. And my drink of choice is tea! When in doubt, drink tea!
2. 2.     Since moving from Minnesota to Missouri I have gained twenty-five pounds. (Yes, read it and weep.) Mostly this comes from eating comfort food. Translation: carbohydrates. I’m trying to lose weight by watching my portions and walking.
3. 3.     The only award I’ve ever won—before today’s!!!—is the writing award for the Diocese of Kansas City way back in 1949. The contest was to write an essay on why comic books were a bad influence on “the youth of America.” I bought into the party line and really criticized the very comics that monthly took me to a world where I was powerful—a great incentive for reading them.
4. 4.    I believe that if J. K. Rowling gave an award to the adult who reread the Harry Potter books the most times, listened to the audio cassettes again and still again, and viewed the movies over and over and over again, I’d win that trophy hands down. I am a great fan—dare I say “the greatest fan” of all things Potter? I enjoy watching him realize the power within goodness and the courage that comes from that.
5. 5.     When I was in the fifth grade, my best friend and I giggled so much that I frequently wet my pants. The whole scenario got so bad that ultimately the school bus driver wouldn’t let me sit on the seats because I stained them. He invited me to stand in the stairwell. We visited all the way to my bus stop. He was a dandy driver and an interesting human being.
6. 6.     Most people think I came from Boston because of my speech, but I was born and raised in the Mid-West. The peculiarities of my speech come from having an auditory learning disability. I can’t easily replicate some consonant sounds. Because of this, I’ve met some really delightful people. They comment on my speech and we get to talking about dialects and the conversation goes on from there.
7. Finally, I am a lover of poetry. In the fifth grade at St. Mary’s Grade School, a nun visited our class each week and introduced us to a new poem. We’d memorize it the following week and then recite it for her. Those poems have stayed with me—The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat, The Owl and the Pussycat, Casey at the Bat, and many others. Poetry continues to help me discover the essence of being wholly human.

Thanks to Mamawolf for recognizing my blog. Tomorrow—Thursday—I will continue my ongoing account of seemingly being abandoned when I was five.