Post #555

Ahem... This post is Number 555. It was going to be #500 but that just didn't happen. So in honour of the occasion, I am revealing five things about me that you probably didn't know and may never have guessed. Here we go:

First Thing About Me
I once liked eating mud.
Second Thing About Me
I wrote poetry as a teenager, and one of my poems was published in real poetry anthology, which was even named after my poem! Mind you, it was published a dozen years ago now and I can't find it for sale anywhere online... I can only find it on ISBNDB. Very disappointing. Well, someone has it for sale on ebay, if you want a copy. I have one already, gratis.Just in case you'd like a teaser... I Like Doing Bombers off the Jetty is a "breath length poem", so you need to take a deep breath and read the first stanza all at once without pausing to take a breath, if you can. Here are the first two stanzas, my favourites:

I like doing bombers off the jetty when the tide's right & the day's hot & the water's cold & a small school of white bait has just swum under the jetty & into the sun so I can land on top of them & scatter all the fish & when I bob up all I can see through lids closed to keep out the salt sea sting is white froth & bubbles everywhere.
I also like the minister's son.

Third Thing About Me
I caught the bouquet at a wedding where I was chief bridesmaid (thanks Inara!) and was married within nine months to a man I had never met before catching the bouquet. Sometimes old wives' tales do come true!Err... just in case you are wondering, that new man in my life was Jeff, the father of our four children, to whom I have now been married for nine years.This photo was taken shortly after we were engaged, seven weeks after we met.
(And in a pleasant addition to this memory, I now wear this same dress to church, since having lost so much weight over the last year, it now fits me again for the first time in most of our marriage.)

Fourth Thing About Me
I have a Graduate Diploma of Education.I worked teaching kids maths, science and even IT in secondary school for six years before I "retired" to mother my own class-ful.

Fifth Thing About Me
I also have a tattoo. When my father first saw it - on the day of my wedding - his first comment was, "Good thing you're going to be his problem from now on!" And I once had my tongue pierced. Now you know why my father made that comment!For the record, I took the stud out shortly before Jeff and I were married. Three reasons:
(1) In playing with the stud, I found that I was knocking it against my teeth a lot, and eventually I managed to chip one or two.
(2) Having something large and rigid stuck through the middle of your tongue changes the way you speak. I found that I was developing a somewhat physiologically-, somewhat psychologically-influenced stutter, which was getting worse. I have had the stud out for ten times longer than I had it in now, but I still stutter once in a blue moon, and I never did before I had it in.
(3) Since Jeff was the only person I'd be kissing (or at least, to use a word I learnt in the schoolyard, "pashing") from now on, I asked him whether he preferred it in or out. Jeff voted for out. So it went.
The tattoo remains.