Sunday Stealing

 

Apparently, there’s someone named Bev, and she “steals” questions and people answer them. That’s about all I know, but here are my answers to the most recent questions.

-What’s your favorite childhood memory?

When I was about 5-years-old I went with my mother to pick up my brother from Little League practice. It was early evening. While we waited in the car for the practice to end, I could see the sun going down through the car window and it prompted me to ask my mother, “Where does the sun go when it goes down?” She took a deep breath and, using the steering wheel (remember those big skinny steering wheels on cars in the 60s?) and the car horn in the middle, explained the solar system to me – the car horn was the sun and the wheel was the orbit. I don’t remember all the details – like how she explained how the planets revolve and orbit – but I remember I thought she had to be the smartest person in the whole world to know all that!

-Do you sing in the shower? I do – not as much as I used to, but I do sing show tunes, choir anthems, popular songs…stuff like that. The funny thing is that my husband, who used to be a singer and choir director never sings in the shower.

-What is the best gift you’ve ever received? I treasure a wedding picture of my parents that my mom gave all of us siblings for Christmas one year. I love it for its own sake, but I also love it because it was the first year she gave me the same present as my siblings. I’m a lot younger than they, and she would always get five of the same present for them and something different for me.

-Do you prefer being indoors or outdoors? I like both unless it is super hot outside – can’t handle the heat. I like gardening; that’s what pulls me outside.

-Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? My daughter calls several times a week, but we text many times. She usually calls me on her lunch hour or afternoon break.

-What do you keep in your bag or handbag? I like a little handbag. Can’t stand those giant tote-type bags. So there’s not much in there – wallet, glasses case, little cosmetic case. There’s a side pocket for my phone. That’s about it. Maybe a pen.

-Can you knit? Oh my gosh, this question kills me! I can crochet, quilt, embroider, garment sew, even macrame, but I can’t knit and I want to so badly. I watch several knitting podcasts – Fruity Knitting; Wool, Needle, Hands; Cherry Heart; Sew Sweet Violet. I see the super cute things they make and all I can do is cast on and knit stitch (and poorly, at that) – and that’s not much!! My brain turns into wool when I try to do more than that. I sound crazy.

-How many hours do you sleep each night? Around six. I slink out of bed around 4 a.m. and go in the living room and cuddle with my calico cat, Daisy Buchanan. Or I listen to an audiobook and cross stitch.

-Who is your role model? I think that I have different role models for different things, like decorating, cooking, working. Everyone is a role model in some way.

-Who was your first ever pen pal? Must have been a girl named Patty, who moved away to Wisconsin in about the 4th grade. We wrote until high school, but I must admit to embellishing my life in some of my letters (in most of my letters). Especially as it pertained to boyfriends. I did Google her years ago and it turns out she died of cancer as a young woman – early 30s.

-What has been your favorite job so far? I never expected to love my work. Stay-at-home mom has been my best job, but my most recent job, freelance grant writer, has been pretty sweet, and the job before that at a college was hugely rewarding in many ways. But my real favorite was sample stitcher for a needlework magazine – didn’t make much money and didn’t care. I just liked stitching the projects and then seeing them in the magazine.

-What is your favorite go-to recipe for mid-week meals? This is hard, because I hate to repeat recipes very often. Maybe veggie burgers and oven fries?

-How often do you eat in a restaurant? Way too often, although because of the pandemic we didn’t eat out for months and months.

-Are you close to your family? Not as close as I’d like to be. We lived away from here for 17 years and I think they just got used to me not being around.

-Which phone app could you not live without? Weather Authority, I guess.

-If you could afford to volunteer full time for a charity, which would it be? Hmm. Probably a museum or botanical garden.

-Do you have any siblings? There were six of us. We arrived boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl. There’s a 20 year spread between oldest and youngest, with five years between the third and fourth and seven years between the fifth and sixth. My mother had at least one child in school between 1943 and 1979.

-Who is your favorite YouTuber? Definitely Laura of Garden Answer. Second place goes to Nicola Parkman of Hands Across the Sea Samplers.

-Have you ever been a bridesmaid or a groomsman? I’ve been a bridesmaid four times. I was an almost-bridesmaid once – the wedding got called off a couple of weeks before the ceremony. Weirder still was that I had never met the bride. I was dating her brother and their mother made her include me in the wedding party.