Permission to Whine...

The always fun Luisa tagged me with this meme this morning...and I'll take her up on it. It's not often that we have permission to voice disgruntled feelings. And as my mother says - when it's your mud puddle, sometimes it's okay to wallow in it. (As long as you eventually get out and shower, of course.)

5 people who will be annoyed that I tagged them:

Betsy
Carrie
Eva
Hannah (because it's about time that you started your own blog!)
Amy Jane (I know you don't usually do the meme thing, but maybe this will serve to inspire some future post.)

4 things that should go into Room 101 to be banished from the earth forever:

Child abuse. All forms.

Realistic horror movies that just serve to perpetuate fear and violence. They give me nightmares and make me afraid to be in my own backyard. I don't like 'em.

Barbie Girl by Aqua. I don't know why. I just have detested this song from the first time I heard it.

The last season of 7th Heaven. So. Many. Reasons.

3 things people do that make you want to shake them violently:

Calling other people any variation on the word 'stupid'.

Scraping silverware on plates. (My siblings still do this on purpose just to make me crazy.)

Grabbing a book out of my hands while I'm reading it. Not a good idea. Ever.

2 things you find yourself moaning about:

Writing anything 'official' about my fiction - a query, a synopsis, an outline....the bane of my scribbling fun.

Potty training. Will it ever end?

1 thing the above answers tell you about yourself:

That I have lots of pet peeves? Because I really had so many answers - I had to pick and choose...I think I'm an idealist. I have pictures in my head of how things should be (probably all picked up from sources such as Little House on the Prairie and L.M. Montgomery...) and it stresses me out when reality interferes. For instance - would Anne and Gilbert ever through Saw? I think not. The imagination is meant for creating works that are beautiful and reflect something important about life and faith - okay, so the dark stuff comes into play (and I realize that this is in my own work)....but the important thing is that it has a point. The bad stuff works into good stuff - or at least shows that there's hope. (And the 7th Heaven thing? That just has to do with aspiring for quality and not quantity. Another whole post.)

History of My Birthday According to the Vast Knowledge of Wikipedia

Luisa tagged me to play this little historical game...and I couldn't resist. A, I love trivia. Especially historical trivia. Especially historical trivia about my very own birthday. And B, I was having a case of writer's block. So the tag was pure serendipity!

1. Go to Wikipedia and enter your birthday without the year:

August 4

2. List three events that occurred that day:

a)1821 - Atkinson and Alexander publish the Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper.
b) 1944 - "A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they find Anne Frank and her family. Her diary was scattered all over the floor and eventually published by her father to become her well- known diary." When I discovered that this was the date of Anne's capture, after reading the diary when I was about nine years old, I felt like my birth date was forever besmirched. That diary made the Holocaust so real - here was this girl, just like me, scribbling in her diary...and she was killed because of hate. It's incomprehensible.
c)1971 - The US launches first satellite into lunar orbit from a manned spacecraft. Ah. Space travel. Did anyone else have to describe what the year 2000 would be like while in elementary school? I'm pretty sure I included easy access to the moon in that description...


3. List two important birthdays:

1792- Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet...what a life. If you've never read all of the rather (semi-sordid) dramatic adventures of Shelley's life, you're missing out.
1900-Elizabeth_Bowes-Lyon, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Today was my first time hearing this - during the second world war, "her seemingly indomitable spirit provided moral support to the British public, so much so that, in recognition of her role as a propaganda tool, Adolf Hitler described her as "the most dangerous woman in Europe." Wow.

4. List one death:

1741 - Andrew Hamilton, American lawyer. I love this quote from his defense of the press, saying that it holds "a liberty both of exposing and opposing tyrannical power by speaking and writing truth."

5. List one holiday or observance:

In El Salvador, it's Transfiguration Bank Holiday. I couldn't figure out what Transfiguration Bank Holiday actually is, but it sounds interesting. Or at least like people might get a day off out of school for it...


Now I'm tagging...Carrie and Betsy - please come out to play!