A Few Things About My Cousin's Crafty Daughter

My favorite cousin and I have been having fun catching up on things. In the process, I learned that her daughter has a blog, My Crafty Condition, on which she recently posted A Few Things About Me. Being a bit behind in my own posts here, I thought I'd share her post, and add a few things about myself, mostly following her lead.

1. I don't think I've got the same mole that my cousin and her kids share.
2. My belly button is also an innie. So much so, that when I was pregnant it never turned inside out, as so many women's do.
3. I got my first pair of glasses when I was ten, shortly after complaining that sunlight gave me headaches.
4. In high school, I wasn't all that fond of history classes, although I had enjoyed reading historical novels since elementary school (I also read mystery, fantasy, and science fiction novels). So far as I was concerned, my teachers and textbooks took entirely the wrong approach by focusing on names, dates, countries, and trends, instead of what it was actually like to live in past times and places.
5. I don't remember ever getting detention; although I could be wrong about that. I do remember that when I was in either fourth or sixth grade, I was nearly sent to the principal's office for insisting that there was, too, such a thing as negative numbers.
6. My favorite girl scout cookies are the mint chocolate kind.
7. Whenever I can get away with it, which is most of the time in the casual desert Southwest, I wear sandals that I can just slip on. When I do have to wear real shoes, I think I put my socks on first, then my shoes.
8. Aside from my husband and our kids, my nearest family (excluding relatives I've never met) is slightly over 320 miles away, and most of my family is thousands of miles away. When I was a kid, my parents used to take me and my brothers to Florida nearly every year, but I haven't been able to manage that. I miss seeing my cousins.
9. When I was a kid, everybody called me Pam, and I hated my name. When I was in my late teens or early twenties, I figured out that it wasn't my name, but my nickname that I disliked, and I've gone by Pamela, ever since. I never had a nickname until I met my current husband and he took me to meet his lama (my husband practices Tibetan Buddhism) and his teacher said that my name Pamela, was the same as the Tibetan name, Pemala, which is the diminutive of Pema, and means lotus. Ever since, Pema has been my husband's nickname for me.
10. When my children were babies, I used to dance around the living room with one in my arms. They're too big, now, and I don't dance nearly enough.
11. When I was in college, I joined a belly dance club for the exercise, only to have my teacher and classmates talk me into making a costume and dancing with them in public. We danced on campus and at local festivals. After doing something like that, any fears I might once have had of dancing in public are a thing of the past.
12. I'm way too clumsy to even consider getting onto a treadmill while wearing heels.
13. I used to wear heels, even though I knew they were bad for my feet; my favorite pair of heels were a pair that had once been my mother's. Now, I usually wear flat-soled shoes, Birkenstocks, or sandals with a heel of less than 1/2 inch. My feet insist on it.
14. It takes about half a glass of wine for me to start feeling the effects of the alcohol, so I rarely drink more than a single glass. I love sweet drinks, and I'm usually just as happy with a non-alcoholic alternative; for example, I'll usually drink a "nada-colada," instead of a piña colada.
15. I never liked horror movies and used to avoid anything that was likely to have gore in it. Even the scene at the beginning of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country turned my stomach, once I realized that those pink/lavender blobs were actually Klingon blood. Strangely, I didn't have the same issue with reading gory scenes. However, since becoming hooked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and then its spin-off Angel, my tolerance has increased to something that resembles that of normal people.