I've been tagged!

Clancy tagged me for a "Getting to know you" meme. This is gonna be a little tough since I just spilled some little-known facts about myself HERE.

Here are the rules:
1. Link the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write 6 random things about yourself.
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let the person know you tagged them on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when you've posted.

Okay, so six random things about myself:

1. I mentioned this one before, but I didn't share a picture last time, so it counts as a new random thing (because I say so!)...The toes next to my pinky toes are crooked


2. My house is a DISASTER right now. We've been busy and away from the house for the bulk of each day for one reason or another, and we seem to come home just long enough to dirty dishes and floors and pull out toys, and then we're gone again, so not much has been cleaned up. We're hoping to rectify that soon...

3. I often wish that we could figure out selling our HOUSE, but keeping the property and putting a new house in place of the current one. 8 years after buying it, it still doesn't really feel like MINE, and I'm overwhelmed at the amount of updating/repairing there is to do, and we don't know where to start or how to fund it, so then we end up doing NOTHING. For 8 years.

4. I love having house plants around my home, but ever since having kids, I've had the worst luck EVER keeping them alive. I guess I spend too much time keeping my kids alive instead... LOL Right now I'm noticing a very dead plant on the windowsill. It was one of two still alive, and was nine years old in July. So now I officially have one remaining living plant, and it needs a bigger pot and some Miracle Grow. Or SOMETHING. Probably a whole new house/care-giver.

5. My Junior year of high school, we had to do a big paper and then give an 8-12 minute speech. It had to be about someone in history. My history teacher had recently been teaching us about Eleanor Roosevelt and I was fascinated by all that she did, so I chose her for my paper and speech. We spent the year doing research, which included needing to find excerpts from writings that person had done, incorporating it into our paper and speech, etc etc etc. The week before our papers and speeches were due, the teachers did a lottery to see what order everyone would go. My name was drawn to go SECOND out of 60+ students. I was horrified at first, but then after I was done, I got to spend the next two weeks doing absolutely NOTHING for that class, but watching speeches being presented. LOL It was a combined history and literature class (so we had two teachers and one taught for the first period of class, then we stayed in the same classroom and the other teacher taught for the second period of class), so we were graded not only on the content of our papers, but also on the grammer, puncuation, etc. Lastly, we were graded on the length of our speech, how clearly we spoke, our eye contact with the audience, our use of hand gestures, etc. We were allowed ONE notecard for prompt notes during our speech. I was terrified my prompt notes weren't going to prompt me well enough in my nervousness about having to give the speech, so I finished my paper earlier than I needed to, then spent hours each evening MEMORIZING IT WORD FOR WORD. All 8 minutes and 32 seconds of it. I gave my speech, could feel my chin quivering like crazy, could feel my stomach churning and my hands shaking. My eyes were glued to one girl in the front of the room for about 80% of my speech, and I honestly couldn't tell you if I used hand gestures or not. After all of the speeches were completed, the teachers started passing out the graded papers/speeches. I waited anxiously for mine and watched just about everyone else receive their grades, but mine never came. Suddenly, my history teacher announced to the class that he had six people he needed to have a serious conversation with about their papers and speeches. I was sure that meant I must have messed up somehow and failed and was probably very near tears at that point. However, he continued on by saying that only six people out of 60+ students in that class had gotten an A on both their speech AND their paper, then called all six of us by name to stand in front of the class for recognition. I have no idea how I pulled it off, because I honestly thought I messed up the presentation portion of things. So anyway, to sum up that long story, I totally rocked that assignment, and I still can't figure out how I passed the speech (and I STILL feel sick when I have to give any sort of presentation/speech).

6. I finally boughy myself some name-brand shoes, pretty much for the first time EVER in my life. My husband has been bugging me and bugging me to spend some money and buy "real" shoes (as he says it), because normally I buy Payless or Target shoes and then wear them until there's nothing left before I'm willing to spend money on myself again to buy new shoes. So I went to Famous Footwear, found a cute pair of shoes on sale for $20 off regular price and am now the proud owner of a "real" pair of shoes. I thought he would be mad because they aren't as sturdy of a shoe as I knew he was thinking about, but when I showed him the shoes and assured them they were a real brand, he said, "THANK GOD! Did you buy more?" I just can't bring myself to spend big money on shoes! Clearly, I'm not a shoe, clothing, SHOPPING person when it comes to MYSELF. For the kids? Different story... LOL
(sorry for the weird angle, I should have just taken them off to photograph them! LOL)

Those shoes are soooooo comfy!!! And CUTE!

I tag Jodi, Cheryl, Cattigan, Shellie, Betsy, and Kristina (and I'm not linking because after typing up all of the above info, I'm DONE typing for now, thank you very much! Adding the code is just too much for me right now)