Playing on Facebook; cheating on the blog

So, I was gonna do something new and exciting, and then I got caught in one of those Facebook pyramid schemes with the writing 25 things about yourself. There was also the Mah Jong. I didn't even have time to install my handy dandy new 'puter game.... so here's 25 random things about me as posted on Facebook.....

1. If Cleaning were an Olympic event…. They wouldn’t let me in the same time zone as the competitors. If they did, I’d probably heckle them and throw banana peels instead of feeling inferior. My house is relatively clean, but it isn’t my doing.
   
2. I dropped out of college to find myself during my first go round at a senior year in college. I moved to London and found out very little except how to be really really really poor and take a lot of chances with my own safety. Funnily enough, this is where I learned how wonderful and kind and generous people are capable of being.
   
3. I have scoliosis. I wore a back brace for four years in junior high and high school. This is where I learned how petty and small and mean and awful people can be. I read an essay, almost 20 years later, that a writer I respect wrote about wearing her Modified Milwaukee brace. I dissolved into tears and lay on my bed for more than a day. Almost 5 years later, I can’t pick up the book to read the rest of the essays in it, and I can’t seem to throw it away either. I think this may be the reason I left the South. I don’t really dwell, but there are people I can’t and won’t forgive.
   
4. know that not everyone loves my dog as much as I do…. But I wish they’d realize that not everyone thinks their kids are as gifted as they do.
   
5. Small children and bunnies frighten me. They move unexpectedly, and they are often kind of aggressive.
   
6. I’m more than a little convinced that Joss Whedon, David Crane, and Marta Kauffman had my last apartment bugged. Too many things I said wound up later on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Friends. Others can attest to this. Someone somewhere owes me a check. The Manda gets one too.
   
7. I find women who dress or speak like little girls to be an affront to humanity. It’s creepy and sad, and anyone who is into that needs therapy, not a girlfriend. Need to be cutesy? Read www.icanhascheezburger.com like the rest of us. I’m addicted to that (but not because I want to play like I’m a little girl) and www.postsecret.blogspot.com .
   
8. I do every bit of laundry in my house, and I do it obsessively. This isn’t because I’m a good girlfriend or a good housekeeper. I cannot stand the thought of someone else washing my underwear. They say every girl inherits something from her mother. Thanks for this one, Mom, and the ankles.
   
9. I have a blog www.riskingabsurdities.blogspot.com . Risking absurdities was the title of the editor’s column during my senior year in high school (I was the editor of my high school newspaper) and that came from my favorite poem (then and now) – Constantly Risking Absurdity by Ferlinghetti.
   
10. I think the key to making the world a better place is to remember the phrase I try to live by – just because it isn’t important to you doesn’t mean it isn’t important.
    
11. I think professional athletes are, for the most part, whiny overindulged punks who should inspire no one. To me, the only good things about professional sports are the tailgates and the parties that championship games inspire. I understand pass interference; I just don’t care.
    
12. I don’t get hockey. I’ve tried, but I really think it’s pointless. And I have a theory that it breeds violent behavior and overinflated, undeserved senses of self worth. I satisfy my bloodlust with the Discovery channel, thank you very much.
    
13. I think I’m so open and accepting of alternative lifestyles (seriously, nothing offends me) because I’m so normal, and I still grew up in a household of people who really don’t understand me, but love me anyway.
    
14. I hate the phrase “I love _____ with my whole heart.” Has anyone ever partitioned their love? “I love him with somewhere between a third and a half of my heart.” It’s trite and annoying. Oh, and if one particular thing, and only that thing, is “your world,” then I think you may be stifling and smothering that one thing. Your world should have many many many aspects to it that you share and enjoy with those who matter to you. That’s how we all grow.
    
15. Gerry and I have been together over three years, and we’ve never had a fight. We annoy each other quite frequently, but I don’t think we’ve ever raised our voices to each other in anger. Sometimes, relationships are NOT hard work. Sometimes, they are quite easy. I think he gets me, and I get him, and neither of us is much interested in changing anything dramatically in the other. Nice work, if you can get it.
    
16. I love my job, but I hate it when people refer to teaching as a calling. Teaching is not my calling. I did not pull a sword from a stone or take vows of poverty and chastity. Teaching is my profession. It has a defined skill set which takes practice and dedication, and NOT everyone can do it. Fewer can do it well. I do it well, and I wish teachers would stop trying to present themselves as saints instead of trained professionals. Wanna know why bankers make more than teachers? Because they demand more respect and they don’t rely on this “calling” bullshit to make themselves feel better. Oh, and teachers VERY RARELY get summers off. I don’t.
    
17. I feel compelled to be reading at least one “smart” book at all times, so that, when my students ask me what I’m reading, I can tell them something not embarrassing. In truth, my favorite writers are Nora Roberts (as JD Robb) and Ann Bishop. I’m slowly becoming a sci-fi fantasy geek too. I’m cool with that, but I’m not ready to come out to my students as such right now.
    
18. When people ask me (usually when there’s a foot of snow on the ground) why I moved to New England, I usually tell them love and money. The truth is that I moved here for the same reason Superman moved to Metropolis. On Krypton, he was just another schmo.
    
19. Wake Forest impresses a lot of people on my resume, but in truth, I went to a college where I never quite fit in. I would have had more fun, and probably done better, elsewhere. I felt like I belonged in grad school at Clemson, although I was definitely ready to leave when I did.
    
20. I always thought I’d have kids one day, but now probably not. I’m not sure how I feel about that. My sister, one of the people I respect more than most people, has two picture perfect children, the home in the burbs, and the whole nine yards. Sometimes I’m very jealous. Then again, I can decide to go to Europe because I damn well feel like it, and all I have to do is drop the dog off with someone (and the list of dog sitters is always a long one – most people DO love my dog as much as I do). Then again, she’s kind of wealthy and my brother in law is a dedicated husband and father, and her life still seems so HARD sometimes. Sometimes, I kind of like that Gerry and I decided to forego children and get a dog and a hot tub instead.
    
21. I’m kind of ambivalent about marriage. Sometimes, I really want to marry Gerry, but sometimes I worry that it would change things between us. It seems to matter so much to people in my family that it makes me think it should matter more to me. I don’t like the underlying idea that I seem to need someone to take care of me. I have taken care of myself for 18 years. I can keep right on if I need to. In my opinion, women who are financially dependent on anyone else aren’t very smart women. Or maybe they are just braver than I….
    
22. I am an animal lover and a conservationist through and through, but I did once kill an endangered species. It was a gray bat, and it came into my apartment in Brighton on a rainy night. I believe in the dignity of all living things, but anything that comes into my bedroom without permission runs the risk of getting hit with the business end of a snow shovel.
    
23. I’m attempting to get into the Green Movement because I think creating a renewable energy infrastructure will make our country great once again by creating the need for skilled labor. Not everyone should go to college. Don’t get me wrong – anyone who WANTS to go to college should be able to go, but anyone who doesn’t want to go to college should still be able to make a respectable income and raise a family. Our choices as Americans shouldn’t be $60K of debt or a lifetime of asking if someone wants fries with that. My grandfather raised 4 kids working on the line, and they didn’t want for much, if anything. People should still have that option.
    
24. I hated Twilight. I love Harry Potter. I’m secretly in love with Dexter (Michael C. Hall) even though he’s a serial killer, although it might be a little weird because I find his brother from 6 Feet Under (Peter Krause) to be smokin’ hot. Is that incestuous or just greedy on my part?
25. The only things I would change about my life right now: I’d like to not live next door to the crazy man (that’s not just me – a jury of his peers agreed), I kind of wish my commute was shorter (although it only sucks three days a week since I leave late morning on the fourth day), and I’d really like another dog (so not going to happen, Gerry, I know). But, really, these are vague desires, not real needs, so I’m pretty content.

Can anyone spare some change?

Yes, I haven't blogged. It was a whirlwind of finals, holidays, and heartworms. Still, I have been writing. I'll add more to the mix later, I'm sure, but my home red-state friends are fretting, and I have a response. They seem concerned that we have elected a President for the first time solely based on race. I don't have permission to repeat the exchange that I didn't write, but that's the gist. Here's my response. Am I right?

On Obama's election being a "racial thing" that will "set race relations back":

I don't think it was racial so much as a nation voting for the candidate LEAST like what was currently in power. I think a lack of experience worked in his favor because people are through with what is in Washington now. Neither party had one experienced person who hadn't fundamently screwed this nation to the wall.

George Bush hurt people in this country and the more they spoke out against him, the more his policies reflected what he said he was trying to abolish. His "you're with us or against us" tactics resembled fascism. I'm not allowed to say who but there's folks less than a mile from your folks' house who voted democrat for the first time in their lives simply because they were so sick of Bush.

I don't know if Obama will fix everything, but McCain would have continued the mess we are in.

It's not the war or even the economy. It's the slow deliberate chipping away of everything that's good about this country.

• It's the telling us it is unpatriotic to question governmental policies.
• It's the Patriot Act.
• It's the turning our lives and health into a commodity and then refusing to regulate those who will determine if we live or die, allowing businesses to let people perish to further their own bottom line.
• It's taking Darwin out of the science classroom because of personal beliefs yet letting him run free in EVERY OTHER AREA OF LIFE.
• It's giving free reign to the financial industry that has proven time and again that they need a time out while tying the hands of self-regulating industries like scientific research and academia.
• It's the putting his goddamn hands on my uterus without permission.
• It's the shoving not God but specifically HIS IDEA OF GOD into every facet of life and telling me I'm wrong if I don't see it his way.
• It's the wiretapping and the torture and the making the rest of the world hate us so visciously that if we ever need anything we better hope it's buried under the white house or stumbling out of the Alaskan wilderness because the rest of the world will laugh.
  
  We've gone from being a world power and leader of the globe to being a monstrous force drunk on its own superiority. We're still the best nation on Earth, yes, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from other cultures -- take what they do well and make it our own. IMPROVE rather than thinking we can be great if we wave a flag and say we are great loudly enough.
  
  Today's a good day for me. And even if Obama fucks things up, Wake is still #1 in basketball, so there.