It's All About Meme

My college roommate Julia, over at the superfun Hooked on Houses, tagged me last week for a meme: Six Interesting Things About Me. It was fun reading Julia's responses on the meme. Even after living with Julia for three years, pulling untold all-nighters for English papers due the next day, and analyzing for hundreds of hours whether the objects of our affection were into us, there were plenty of things I found I didn't know about her.

I'm tagging my Mom, Eleanore; my mother-in law, Leneta, and my friends Kim, Amy, Kitty, and Cynthia. (Don't feel obliged to do this, though, when you get the e-mail, taggees.)

Six Interesting (or Not So) Things About Me

1. This is the most recent CD I purchased:

I bought it last week, and I feel I've already gotten my $9.99's worth many times over. I make no apologies, except to my kids, who have had to since endure my tuneless renditions of such classics as "Daybreak" and "Mandy." Rock on.

2. I feel very strongly about making environmentally sustainable, healthy food choices, yet find myself like a moth to a flame when confronted with Peeps or Brown Sugar Cinnamon PopTarts.

3. I'm very intimidated in the kitchen and when making crafts, and often have to think through the most simple recipe or pattern for days before attempting it.

4. I'm a Lansbury, and related to Angela -- although I won't be hurt should she shut me out of her will. I love Ms. Lansbury's decades of work; my favorites being Mrs. Lovett from the 1982 stage version of Sweeney Todd, and saucy maid Nancy Oliver from 1944's Gaslight:

While I think Angela Lansbury seems to be both a very nice person and one heck of a crime fighter, I'm most proud of being related to Angela's grandfather, George Lansbury, who served on Parliament in England for 20 years in the first half of the twentieth century, and led the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935.

George Lansbury was a socialist who lived among the working class and truly labored to improve conditions. He paid for his down-on-his-luck brother and his brother's family (wife and two toddler daughters) to travel from England to Canada and set up a new life just after the turn of the century. One of the toddler daughters was my maternal grandmother, Edith Lansbury Wilson, the only grandparent I had growing up. She taught me to knit when I was six years old.

5. I won the fifth grade spelling bee at my school, but went down in the city competition on the word "jeans." That's right. Jeans.

6. I said for months that I didn't care whether Sylvia was a boy or a girl, and that it would be so much fun to have another boy, but the truth is, I was secretly rooting for a girl. Thanks for obliging me, Sylvie.