Hello, My Name Is . . .

Yeah, well. And I don't much like Facebook, though it's awfully ensnaring if you've got a free moment, and someone's happened to break your weeks-long run of ignoring the fact that you've got a Facebook page by sending you something like, oh, I don't know, this, for example:

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

Really? Write about myself? Oh, but I couldn't. Really. I'm way too modest. You don't want to hear about little old me. Well, maybe you do. Of course you do. And what kind of person would I be if I hurt your feelings? But how will I ever, ever, ever come up with 25 random things to say about myself?

Turns out, amazingly, that I can think of random things to say about myself at the rate of approximately one per minute. And because you're dying to know -- in fact, every time you stand in the grocery-store checkout line, and you look at the covers of the magazines, you think, "But where is Mrs. T? What 25 compelling stories of her life are going untold?" -- here they are:

1. I've lived in my current house since August, and been down in the basement exactly once.

2. I don't know what the state bird of North Carolina is, but I do know the state dog.

3. I've never been in my attic.

4. I love having a teenager in my house, but I miss having a baby.

5. I'm planning to till up my driveway and become a smalltown urban farmer.

6. I met my husband in church.

7. I spend way too much time online.

8. I'm wearing my daughter's shoes.

9. I sang a solo at Mass on Christmas Eve.

10. I like Mason's English Ironstone china -- a lot.

11. I'm a grad-school dropout.

12. I'm supposed to be finishing an article on teaching sonnet-writing for a homeschooling magazine.

13. I procrastinate -- a lot.

14. I'm still in touch with one student from my brief high-school-teaching career 20 years ago.

15. I'm still in touch with my high-school English teacher.

16. I like cooking, but hate folding laundry.

17. I used to hate the very idea of going to Confession, but I don't any more.

18. I used to hate the very idea of being pro-life, but I don't any more.

19. I have helped to build a school gym in Jamaica and a pioneer sauna in the NC mountains.

20. I once gave -- well, it wasn't the coat off my back, but it was my favorite sweater -- to a woman in a parking lot who was asking for money for a bus to Little Rock, and who looked really cold. I figured it was what Jesus would have done.

21. I used to suffer from debilitating panic and anxiety attacks, but since I started making a regular confession, they've pretty much stopped.

22. I have had two cavities in my entire life.

23. I spent two summers in college teaching horseback riding.

24. My favorite item of clothing is a dark-teal silk-velour winter scarf.

25. I once wrote 37 sonnets -- one a day every day, excluding Sundays -- as a Lenten discipline, and every year I wish I could think of another discipline that perfect, but I haven't yet.


All right, are you happy now? Of course you are.