Seven Things You May Not Want To Know About Me

My friend BD over at The Busy Dad Blog tagged me to write Seven Fun Facts about myself. I’ve been wrestling with this one because I keep confusing fun facts with true confessions. I’ve decided to stop over-thinking this and am just going to pull the trigger on what I’ve got. I’ll leave it up to you to interpret which are Fun Facts and which ones should be True Confessions.

#1 - Thursdays Are Maid For Fibbing

I never understood why my mother always wanted me to clean up before the housekeeper arrived. This made zero sense to me. Well, now that I’m a mom, I totally get it. They can’t really vacuum the floor if it is covered with Polly Pockets, DVD cases, dog toys, dirty clothes, yet-to-be-unpacked-suitcases and the latest art project. But Thursday (Maid Day) comes around so quickly and sometimes I’m too stressed to clean up for their arrival. Lord knows I would die if they – or anyone – could see how messy my house can get. So I just call on Thursday mornings and tell them my daughter is very sick and home from school and we simply have to skip service this week.

Let’s just say they probably think my daughter has a chronic illness.

#2 –It’s Not ‘Just Like Riding A Bike’ For Me

I can’t ride a bicycle.

I did learn how to ride a bike when I was six-ish, I just didn’t like it all that much. I preferred the low-density, earthy power of The Big Wheel. And I don’t really remember riding bikes with friends in elementary and middle school. So I had no idea that I had actually unlearned how to ride a bike until I was at the beach in high school and we all rented bikes. I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t turn, couldn’t stop. I was so frustrated I ditched it in some bushes and hitched a ride with my friend’s dad who was passing by in the family station wagon.

#3 – Delta Delta Delta…Can I Help Ya, Help Ya, Help Ya?

It was so long ago that it seems like a dream from a far-off mystical place….but yes, I was in a college sorority and it was a blast. I loved the parties. And the friends. And the songs. I loved playing Elvis in our skit and I was even Rush Chair our senior year.

I’m still best friends with these delta girls. In fact one of them is celebrating a birthday...Happy Birthday Darlin! But her 37th birthday means it is the 16th Anniversary of Whiplashgate.

Whiplashgate. Yikes. Let’s just say I was a bit overserved the night before my friend’s 21st birthday. Beer…boy…hickey. I wore a neckbrace to my friend's formal birthday dinner the next night. Her whole family was there and I had everyone convinced I was in a carwreck and had suffered whiplash. Yeah, I had everyone convinced…for a little while.

#4 – I Love To Decorate Cakes and Cupcakes

I am not a pastry chef. My delectable designs are not very sophisticated. But I love doing it. No one believes I actually decorated the football cake for the Sugar Bowl but I really did, I swear! I also got bored last summer and started doing rainbow trout and other flyfishing themed cupcakes.

#5 – A Regular Annie Oakley

I used to go hunting with my dad, mostly for deer and antelope. And I was actually a pretty good shot with a rifle. I’ve also been bird hunting half a dozen times or so, and while I’m not that skilled with a shotgun, I really enjoy it.

I went to an all-girls high school, and junior year my friends and I decided to join The Riflery Team. I have no idea why we decided to do this. I suppose we were bored with modern dance and cheerleading and basketball. Our initial goal was to beat our brother school, which we did handily if memory serves. But we quickly outgrew worrying about high school boys when we learned we would get to practice on a college campus, ooh la la. Granted it was a dark underground bunker where the Vanderbilt ROTC practiced target shooting, but we thought we were hot stuff prancing across The Vanderbilt campus in our plaid kilt uniforms and saddle oxfords…carrying a rifle case.

After practice we’d go to this dive bar that seemed more than eager to serve underage girls without fake IDs. We would actually go in there in our high school uniforms to drink beer and commandeer the jukebox.

Needless to say that place is no longer in business.

#6 –Like Zoolander, I Can’t Go Left

I don’t like to take an unprotected left in traffic. It makes me feel completely panicked. I will go around the block and out of my way to enjoy the calm, predictable experience of a Left Turn Arrow or a 4-way stop. Life is just too stressful as it is. Seems like a simple way to eliminate a touch of anxiety.

#7 – I’m a Fairly Decent Public Speaker

A few years ago a former colleague of mine enlisted Gov Ann Richards and me to do a presentation to her division/team on public speaking. She wanted us to help them with their presentation skills as well as improve their client pitches in smaller settings. Ann decided we should kick things off with a skit, showing the team all the things NOT to do in a client pitch. Ann felt women in our firm dressed inappropriately in client meetings so to prove a point she convinced me to dress up in super slutty clothes and pretend to do this fake client pitch in a black leather miniskirt and giant gold hoop earrings. Ann shot one-liners at our fake client, interrupting him, talking over him, confusing every detail of his pretend business. She was a natural comedienne and literally had the room doubled over with laughter. Meanwhile I just looked like a tacky streetwalker and didn’t get a single laugh. But hey, not many people can say a former governor of Texas dressed them up in fishnet tights and videotaped it.

Well, okay, maybe some other people can say that, but I did it legally and it was all on the up and up.

So that’s it. Seven oddball facts about me. Surprised?

Let’s here from someone else in the class…

Mimzie's Musings
Jogging In Circles
Daily Blessings

Here’s the assignment:
-- Share 7 facts about yourself
-- Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs (I know, I petered out at 3. but they are 3 good ones!)
-- Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
Click Here to Keep Reading...

One Plucky Chicken

Welcome to the inaugural post of my very first blog. My name is Christine and I am a divorced mother (Divorce Class of 2004) in Austin, Texas, raising an eight-year old daughter. And I have to say, things are going shockingly well. Finally.

It has been a hell of a ride.

I don’t like to reflect on the year right before my divorce, much less the year right afterwards. I have never felt or acted less like myself. I remember trying to explain to a girlfriend that I was being such a chicken, terrified of the very things I used to do without effort. Scared to write. To eat at a restaurant by myself. To go to PTA meetings. To speak to clients. To be alone for an entire weekend. And not just any chicken...I felt like a chicken being choked around the neck, while having my feathers plucked out one by one. Naked and exposed and certain that the stifling grip was ironically the only thing keeping me from sliding into a pot of boiling water.

I’m sure a trained therapist would say I was likely suffering from some social anxiety disorder and temporary paranoia brought on by the stress of my marriage ending. But I didn’t give my therapist enough couch time to hear all the gory details. And I stopped sharing with friends too. If you’ve been through a divorce you know how that goes. As wonderful and supportive as they are, our friends can literally only hear so much. And my friends did not like seeing me as the scared little chicken. Not one bit. It just didn’t compute. So each day I would either feign mental health or hide out in solitary confinement. I did most of my grocery shopping at 7-11 in those days.

At this time I actually had a kickass executive job at a consulting firm where former Texas Governor Ann Richards was a senior advisor. I had the good fortune to work on a few client projects with her which was a treasure in its own right. But one day, I got a gift I could have never expected.

Her assistant rang my office and said that Ann wanted to see me. Truthfully I was hoping to spend a meeting-free day behind closed doors doing some actual work. Ruffled by this unexpected call I madly grabbed the client folder I assumed she wanted to discuss and scurried down the hall to her office. Bluntly she said, “Rumor has it you’re going through a divorce.” Rattled, I barely maintained my executive polish a bit longer, politely confirming that ‘yes’, in fact, I was going through a divorce.

Well she stripped me of that lovely veneer as fast as she could talk. She’d been there and wanted to know exactly how I was doing. How many girlfriends did I have who had been through it. That wasn’t many. She gave me a reading list of novels and told me to come back and talk with her about them for fun. Asked if I’d like to go to a movie sometime. What restaurants did I like. Not to worry about any friends that would ditch me. Find better, more interesting friends. Stay busy. She finished as bluntly as she began, “Listen Christine, you are in the fight of your life. Just remember how brave you are. And for heavens sake, don’t hang out in your house alone. If you need something to do, call me.”

Well I was blown away! Besides being a little bit scared of her directness, I was really very touched. Governor Ann Richards took the time to check in on me. Me? ME?? I mean, just the day before I had been eating Cheetos in bed while on a client conference call. Her tough words were inspiration enough to rise to the challenge. That was it. I was going to be FINE. Enough of being a depressing ninny. I wanted to be the courageous woman Ann Richards thought I could be. I was going to wake up the next day and toss out the Hostess Cupcake wrappers on my nightstand, eat whole grains, fruits and vegetables, host interesting dinner parties and be an all around fabulous divorcée.

Well, of course that didn’t happen, at least not the next day. I wallowed for months to come. Quit my job. Got a little more lost before I was found. There were more Hostess Cupcakes. My countless trips around the Whataburger drive-through became like the scene in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where the fantasy creatures race round and round an island in circles without a clear start or finish line.

And then a funny thing happened.

I was at my daughter’s elementary school last year and another mom was telling me about the divorce she was going through. As if channeling Ann Richards, I went into caretaker action mode. I asked if she had plans for Mothers Day, and with a air of upperclassman confidence and experience I outlined her Mothers Day plans and explained how critical it was for her to be prepared for such a tough day post divorce.

And that’s when it hit me. Life goes on. There is a whole a new freshman class of divorced moms coming up the ranks, and my pain is old news. Thank heavens. How liberating. And suddenly I realized I had long since graduated from being a scared little plucked chicken, into a bold, plucky chicken. Life is ok. My daughter cracks me up daily. I love being a homeroom mom. Dating life is no longer treacherous – now it’s just hysterical and fun. I am so busy with friends that I relish time alone. And lo and behold here I am writing again.

Governor Richards died last year so we never made it to the movies. They have renamed a bridge in downtown Austin in her honor, and I can’t think of a better metaphor for the role she served in my life. She was my bridge. Her advice helped me get to the other side of a really painful era, and I get farther from it each time I pass along her advice to someone else. So for me, the question isn’t “Why did the chicken cross the road?” but “Why did the chicken cross the bridge?”

My answer is simple: “Because Governor Ann Richards Kicked My Butt To Get Over It.”

Welcome to Chicken Fried Therapy. Be a brave chicken. Click Here to Keep Reading...