Getting to know you

I've seen this on a few other people's blogs and thought I'd play along.  It's fun to post about something than my anger and angst occasionally.  Play along if you'd like, but I'm not going to tag anyone.

(1) What is your dream occupation?
It really depends on my mood.  I would love to be a Supreme Court Justice, or a pop star, or an acclaimed writer.

(2) What is the best dish that you can cook?
Hmm, tough one, since I don't cook much.  I make pretty good green chile chicken enchiladas but rarely make them because my husband doesn't eat them.  I also make good chile con carne and tacos.

For anything else, I can only cook it and have it turn out OK if I have a written recipe which I can follow precisely.  Sad to admit at age 39 but true.

(3) Have you ever been mentioned in the newspaper? What for?
Oh yes, I've been in the newspaper a number of times.  In my small hometown, we had a weekly paper, and the schools' events and accomplishments were regularly featured.  I have been in there for making the honor roll, playing on sports teams in junior high, band competitions, getting scholarships, etc.  I was also in the major newspaper in "the big city" when I was Grand Worthy Advisor (kinda like "State President" for those who don't know Rainbow) of Rainbow in my home state years and years back.

(4) What’s the worst and/or most memorable job you’ve ever had?
I had so many crappy, low-wage jobs in college, and oddly enough, some of the ones you might think of as awful, like working at the McDonald's drive-thru or delivering pizzas, were actually pretty fun.

I think my worst job was one of my nursing contracts in New England.  To protect the innocent (and the guilty), I won't say what state the job was in, but I worked night shift in an old, run-down hospital with a mostly undesirable patient population in an economically depressed, blue-collar town.  (Lots of addicts, alcoholics, and people with chronic illnesses who didn't take care of themselves.)

I worked on a medical floor which was chronically understaffed.  The people I worked with were mostly nice, but I had little-to-no help because we are all so busy.  I made no friends during the nearly five months I was there (rare for me), and I knew no one in the town.  I felt so out of place there, too, because everything was so different from what I was used to in the West: the accents, the topography, the architecture, you name it.  (Those of you who live in the Northeast will laugh, but I'd been there nearly a month before I figured out that "Super Stop & Shop" was a grocery store.  LOL)

Although I have had quite a few bad jobs, I think the combination of working in a really horrible job, feeling out of place and being far from home with no friends are what make this one memorable to me.

(5) When you were a teenager, at what age did you envision yourself getting married? How old were you in reality when you got married?
I thought I’d be married by 27 (to a tall, dark and handsome man with a great job) and have at least one (wonderful & perfect) child by 30.  (I also thought I'd be driving a BMW and working on a cure for cancer.  Are you getting the flavor that perhaps my teenage dreams were not very realistic?)

I actually got married at age 37.

(6) What’s your most hated household chore? What’s your favorite?
I hate, hate, hate cleaning the shower in our master bathroom.  It has glass doors which my husband refuses to squeegee after his (twice daily) showers, and even the floor never looks totally spotless, no matter what products I use or how much I scrub.  I'd rather do ANY chore but this one and have often contemplated hiring a twice-monthly housekeeper just due to this one task.

I like doing laundry.  I get a certain sense of satisfaction and peace from sorting, folding and putting away.  It's odd.

(7) What’s your earliest memory?
I can actually remember having a potty training accident once.  I was playing a game and didn't want to stop and waited to long to get to the bathroom.  I remember my mom getting mad and punishing me with a "timeout."  I know it was summertime, and my mom has told me she started potty training me when I turned 2, so I must've been about 27-30 months old then.