What the hell--because who doesn't love a good meme?
Accent: Standard American.
Booze: Yes, please. As I detail in this post, I prefer beer (especially dark beers) to wine, vodka to gin, tequila to whiskey. I'm especially fond of margaritas.
Chore I Hate: Dusting. I LOATHE dusting.
Dog or Cat: Cat.
Essential Electronics: I could be happy with just stereo and a typewriter, to be honest. But I have a computer and a television and cell phone and all that stuff, and I like them well enough.
Favorite Cologne(s): My very favorite is Chanel No. 5. I also really like Hot Couture by the Fragrance Shop, especially because it's just essential oils, so it doesn't have to be used up in six months or so. When I was dating Jim a decade or so ago, he invented a perfume for me: it was heavy on the vanilla, and I liked it a lot. I was big into aroma therapy for a while and still sometimes mix up my own scents.
Gold or Silver: Silver, and lots of it. I wear a lot of jewelry.
Hometown: Thatcher, Arizona.
Insomnia: Dear god, it's the bane of my existence. I have a sleeping pill hangover even as I write this.
Job Title: Assistant Professor.
Kids: None of my own, but I have 15 nieces and nephews.
Living arrangements: I own a small gray house in a city somewhere in the rust belt. I live alone and don't really like to share space.
Most admirable trait: The trait people most often tell me they admire is my honesty. Honesty is supposedly a trait of my sun sign, Sagittarius (see below). Personally, I admire my attention to detail: If I find a typo in a blog entry, I always A) experience a moment of profound mortification, then B) correct the damn typo. (Some people might call that a compulsion--see below.)
Number of sexual partners: Um, see this post for the reason why I'm not going to make that information available on the web.
Overnight hospital stays: Several, beginning when I had my tonsils out at age four. The worst was when I had exploratory abdominal surgery when I was 14.... I don't like that story and don't want to get into it now. But I haven't had a single such overnight stay since that horrible surgery.
Phobias: I don't think I have any phobias, just obsessions and compulsions. I check my locks a lot.
Quote: I collect quotations--I use them as signatures for my email messages, or as epigraphs for my writing--but one of my favorites it this:
I do not sleep though I sometimes doze off a little. If I am up I am talked to and in my efforts to answer cause pain. The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; to suffer. I signify all three. --Ulysses S. Grant
I also like this, from a freakin' old Christmas carol:
The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown,
Of all the trees that are in the woods,
The holly bears the crown.
And in the end of On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner talks about what was going on when he wrote the end of Grendel (one of my very favorite books EVER), and he uses the phrase "the moral ugliness that is God." I think about that a lot. (I'll try to find the exact wording and a page citation, so check back later if you're interested.)
Religion: My standard, careful answer is, "I grew up Mormon."
Siblings: Three sisters, one brother.
Time I wake up: Around 8 a.m. I don't set an alarm.
Unusual talent or skill: My memory is preternaturally detailed, accurate and extensive. Matthew? Jim? Are you reading? Want to back me up on this?
Vegetable I refuse to eat: Pickled bamboo. VILE.
Worst habit: Sheesh, I can only pick ONE? High on the list is: letting myself get sucked into arguments I know I should walk (run) away from. I list other bad habits here and here (you have to scroll down a ways to find them).
X-rays: Lots and lots, for my teeth, for broken bones and sprains, for horrible gastro-intestinal disorders. The very worst set of x-rays I ever had involved a barium enema. You just can't imagine how awful that is unless you've gone through it yourself. Luckily, it's been a while since I've had any.... I'm pretty healthy these days.
Yummy foods I make: See my various recipe archives. I especially recommend the chocolate stuff.
Zodiac sign: Sagittarius sun and moon, with Libra rising. (Yeah, I've had my charts done a couple of times.) A recent article in the Guardian UK summarized my sign this way:
Generous and friendly, Sagittarians are so open that the world often knows what they are up to. Good sense of intuition and very honest, they can also be big spenders. Compatible with Arians and Leos.Typical: Frank Sinatra
Atypical: Winston Churchill
That's the end of the alphabet, folks!
What a wonderful meme! Did you devise it?
I did not. I don't even remember where I first saw it, or I would give credit. You're welcome to do it next....
You're from the Valley? Cool. My grandfather is from Pima, my grandmother from Central. Wasn't S. W. Kimball from Thatcher? Did your parents move to Thatcher, or had your family been there since pioneer days? Mine moved to Az in the 1870s. Said it was voluntary, but there was also a little skirmish with B.Y. over some copper mines in Utah. Needless to say, my family was on the losing end of that one, and I have the bank account and inheritance to prove it.
Okay, done!
Omigod, Margo, I can't believe you know to call it "the valley"!
Yes, Spencer W. Kimball (12th "prophet, seer and revelator" of the Mormon Church, for those of you who might not know that) grew up in Thatcher, Arizona.
The first white inhabitants of Thatcher, Arizona were my great-great-grandfather JMM and his family, in 1881. Other ancestors of mine were living in other parts of the state--make that territory--by then as well. Despite the fact that I had an ancestor on the Mayflower, none of my grandparents were born in the United States: three were born in Arizona before it became a state (one in Safford, one in Thatcher, and one in Saint David), and the fourth was born in "the colonies" (which is what Mormons call the settlements in Mexico where polygamists went so they could stay polygamists, for those of you who also don't know that). Several of my great-grandparents were born in Arizona as well, which makes me a fourth-generation native, and there aren't too many white people my age who can claim that status.
I'm dying to know your grandparents' names.... I don't want to blow anyone's anonymity, but this is just too juicy and interesting for me. I'll email you so you can tell me off-blog if you're willing.
It's just so weird to get comments from someone who knows anything about this tiny town in the middle of nowhere.
I don't work that hard to preserve my anonymity, and besides, the family I care about is my mother's and I have my father's last name, so no biggie. My grandmother was a Cluff (family had a lumber mill in Central, I think) and my grandfather's name was Williams. His mother was a Rogers--related to the judge, or some other important guy that UA's law school is named after. I don't know much about the Williams, but I can recite the Cluff lineage back to when David Cluff was converted by Martin Harris on a riverboat. Did you see my post about polygamy? The woman who left my family, Ann Bond, was married to a Moses Cluff. When my family first came to Arizona they settled in Shilo (sp.?), but it was Apache land and govt. protected, so they moved on to Central. Safford is a name I've heard all my life. Fun times!
I did see the post on polygamy (I also have plenty of polygamists in my family) and I would love to see the novel you discuss there.
One of my best friends from high school was a Cluff with family from Central. Thatcher and Central were both so small that they're in the same school district--and even then there were only 80 kids in my graduating class.
Very, very funky. It's indeed a small world after all.
Holly, I enjoyed reading that. Gee, I didn't see you as a lots o' jewelry girl. See, you learn something everyday. (I wear gobs of silver, too)
I not only like silver, Reese, I like it surrounding big shiny hunks of stone, generally semi-precious, since I can rarely afford the precious kind. Big pendants, big bracelets, big earrings, and SHINY. I dig that stuff. In my next life, I want to be a geologist and/or a silver smith.
It's really not all that odd to know a little bit about Thatcher. I mean, it's right on the way from Reserve to Globe! Assuming you wouldn't rather go through Springerville and Show Low, of course. But why would you want to do something crazy like that?
I broke a tooth in Thatcher about ten years ago.
I'm a fan of big honking silver and turquoise myself, from which I abstain nonetheless for fear of looking like a recent Ohioan transplant to Taos. But something like this is always hard to pass up.
I can confirm Holly's amazing memory - so be careful what you say to her - she will remember it for the next twenty years! On the other hand she remembers all the nice stuff, too :-) It is an excellent gift for a writer and she uses it well. I think the journal writing helps, too - writing things down on the day probably helps to remember them.
Hey Chris--sorry about your tooth.
And you're right, it's not THAT weird to know about this town IF you travel the backroads of Arizona, but I've met people who've lived in Arizona for 20 years, and when they ask where I'm from and I tell them, they say, "Where's that?" And I'll say, "It's at the base of Mount Graham." And some of them (campers, cyclists and hikers) say, "Ooohhh." But plenty more say, "Is that up by Flagstaff?" And I'll say, "No, it's 150 miles southeast of Phoenix and a 120 miles northeast of Tucson."
Anyway, one reason I knew I wanted to read your blog was the line about how you spend as much time as you can in the arid southwest. I never doubted the sincerity of the statement, but it's gratifying to know you've used your time there to get to know something besides Phoenix, Tucson, Sedona and Taos.
Oh, don't get me wrong: I love Tucson dearly and even hold a soft spot in my heart for Sedona, as long as I'm hiking away from it. But you're right too. The town I tend to head for most often in the desert is Cima, California.
Cima is exactly the kind of landscape that grabs at my solar plexus--I love that big lumpy mountain in the background and giant sky above it all!
And I love Tucson too--it's where I went to school, where my grandparents lived--but there is this whole big state around it as well.
“I wear a lot of jewelry.”
Hey, just like Reese, I learned something new! I wouldn’t have guessed this. (And I prefer silver to gold, too.)
“The trait people most often tell me they admire is my honesty.”
I only “know” you via the blogosphere, of course, but I continually admire the honesty that shines through your writing.
Thanks for sharing!
I love that big lumpy mountain in the background
Well, if it ever happens that we're in the same place with a pot of coffee and nothing better to talk about, I could tell you a few stories about that mountain range. Which is a good thing, as it's pretty much the fulcrum of the book I'm supposed to be writing.
Reese and Frankengirl, I'm glad to know such cool women share my fondness for silver jewelry.
I had a classmate in grad school who was blind. She said she could always tell when I was in the room, even before I spoke, because my jewelry made so much noise.
Chris wrote, I could tell you a few stories about that mountain range. Which is a good thing, as it's pretty much the fulcrum of the book I'm supposed to be writing.
Ah, that book one is supposed to be writing.... I'm supposed to be writing three books--or is it four? I've lost track. But I'm not talking about any of them right now because I'm trying not to jinx any of them.... Maybe I can talk about at least one of them by the end of the summer.
My two favorite mountain ranges are the Pinalenos (which is where Mount Graham is) and the Catalinas (the mountains to the north of Tucson). I particularly like how ragged and weird and susceptible to shadow the Catalinas are, but the Pinalenos are more familiar, and I just dig them. All of which is to say, I would very much like to hear more about that range you love.