Seven Silly Tidbits

Do you possess any unique abilities? 

I can squat so that my elbows touch the floor without lifting up my heals. Try it: put your feet in a V-position and squat. When kids attempt it, they fall over or almost rip their pants. I thank my jr. high basketball coaches, Ruth Hausemann and Cindy Borkowski, for my flexibility. They required stretching of hamstring, quads, calves, and more before we did a thing in practice.

Me at 40. I can still do it eight years later.

What ability or skill do you wish you had?

Operating a hair dryer to style my hair. I just don't get it. Hair stylists have patiently tried to teach me. I can't do it. For those like me, here's how to solve this problem: go to bed with it wet so it will puff up by morning. I place a towel on my pillow to absorb the moisture. It also serves as a drool catcher.

If you could live anywhere in the world and afford it upon your retirement, where would that be? 

 

In my childhood home in South Dakota renovated by my HGTV favorites: the Property Brothers, the Fixer Upper couple, the Love It Or List It duo, and the Flip or Flop couple. I have fond childhood memories of that house, and it would be the best place to grow old—just like my dad. At 89, he's living in the house he was born in. Parts of the house are ready to fall in, so all those HGTV reinforcements and remodeling gurus would be necessary. I would need lots of money to pull it off.

 

Believe me, it looks even worse now. This was back in 2011. Paint alone would do wonders.

You can only keep one modern amenity in your home. What would you pick between the microwave, the Internet, and the television? 

 

I have always loved TV. As a little girl, I got in trouble for sitting too close to it. As an adult, I do housework and exercise while watching TV. I do enjoy cooking, so I could live without a microwave, and I can get Wi-Fi at work or in public places, so unlike my husband, I could survive without the Internet at home. There is nothing like sitting down with my doggies and watching television. TV is like another person to me. It talks to me and I talk back to it. No, I’m not Mildred from Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I don't have three walls of it, but I do own four televisions.

What is your greatest fear?

A tornado or some other disaster destroying, not my house, but all of my computer generated documents. So for years, I have had a tornado file. I coined the term a long time ago when Esther Mayer, one of our school's maintenance employees, caught me running off papers and stuffing them into manilla envelopes at the end of the school year. I told her I was making copies to store at my sister Priscilla's in South Dakota. Thus came the term, tornado file. Now I just switch out jump drives when I go up for a visit. But I do have back-ups in my house on an external drive, on my home PC, and on another jump drive. I keep a jump drive in my desk at school too. No, I do not trust the Cloud, Dropbox, or Google Drive for my back-ups. I want access without the Internet. A bit overkill? Maybe, but this is a fear I can do something about, so I will do everything I can to prevent losing over two decades worth of work.

Biggest regret?

I should have taken a basic economics class in college. If I had, I might actually understand the difference between stocks and bonds, an annuity, a 401B, and a Roth IRA. I might even be able to explain what the heck a mill levy is. My oldest nephew Michael has given me countless lessons on these terms, but I do not retain any of it. Taking an economics course might have stopped me from making money mistakes. To learn more about those, read my post entitled, Dollars and Sense: A Lesson in Interest of a Different Kind.

Future wishes?

I have been an aunt since I was 6-years-old, and I want to be healthy enough to live so I can be a great-great-great aunt. I am already a great aunt with my oldest great, Leah, being 12-years-old. So if she marries in eight years and has a child soon after, I will be in my mid-50's and become a great-great. Then if her child gets married around 20 and has a child right away, I'll be a great-great-great and be in my mid-70s. That's possible. Now, if I have to depend on the youngest great, the one to be born this November to my niece Suzanne and her husband David, I'll have to make it well past a hundred years old for it to all work out using that have-a-kid-at-20 formula. 

I am in the middle surrounded by my nieces and nephews. From these 8, come 19 greats.

 

You are given a chance to meet and spend time with one of your relatives who is no longer living. Who would it be?

After I wrote my answer, I decided this person deserves more than a few sentences. Will it be one of my second cousins, my grandparents, my mom, one of my aunts or uncles, or my state wrestling champ cousin? Stayed tuned for a future post about this person.

Writer's Note: I was tagged by my online writing friend and fellow blogger, Shelli Littleton, to post random pieces of information about myself. So I interviewed myself and had fun writing this post. Thanks, Shelli, for the inspiration of this post and some others to come! The link for Shelli's list is here.