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February 5, 2004
100 Things You May
Not Know About Katrina 1. I was born in the basement of the church ministered by my grandmother. It was a basement apartment in which she lived. 2. I was born at exactly 12:00 noon EST. The noon whistle blew as my body slid out of my mom's. 3. I have six children, five boys, one girl. There is a ten year gap between each set of three. 4. I am a licensed minister and can perform legal weddings, etc. 5. I have held many professions in my life, including librarian, every restaurant position you could hold, Lamaze childbirth instructor, medical front office work, medical transcriptionist, preschool administrator, police data entry (I did input on the tickets and incident reports), telephone operator and environmental protection assistant. I started working when I was 16 and “retired” at 37. 6. My husband and I took a bankruptcy to enable me to be a stay at home mom after my favorite cousin’s daughter died of leukemia at 12. She was a stay at home mom and when Natalie died, I thought about all she would have missed if she’d worked. I quit my job the next week and since then, we’ve gone through a lot to keep it that way, but never once regretted it. 7. My husband is 15 years younger than I am. We got married on his birthday so he would be old enough to gamble in Reno. 8. My first husband and I married in 1978, divorced in 1991, remarried in 1994 and our second divorce was final in 1996. 9. My daughter was named for my favorite cousin, mentioned in #6. 10. My first son, Joe, named my third son, Josh. We didn’t have a boy’s name and Joe was reading a story with a character named “Joshua” in it and suggested the name. He was four at the time (Joe, not Josh). 11. Only my first two children were born in hospitals. Josh, Dylan and Nathan were born at home and Delena was born in a free standing birthing center. 12. At age 41, I became the oldest in my line of family. Both of my parents and all of my grandparents have died. 13. My first son was born when I was sixteen and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. 14. Both Delena and Nathan completely lost heart tones during birth and had to be aggressively resuscitated afterwards. 15. After a great deal of exhaustive letter writing, researching, interviewing and fact-finding, in 1992, I decided not to vaccinate my children. This was not a decision arrived at lightly and was done prior to having the internet, so it was done the old fashioned way… snail mail. I compared reported instances of the contraction of the diseases “in the wild” and typical results of the diseases versus the instances of complications from vaccines and charted out a twenty year trend based on info provided by the American Medical Academy, the Atlanta Center of Disease control and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among others. None of my last three children are vaccinated. 16. I am adamantly against the circumcision of babies. Again, this comes after aggressive research on the subject. Only one of my sons is circumcised and that was because I stupidly caved to the wishes of my husband (it didn’t happen again). 17. I was a devout Christian until 1978, then became an Atheist, which didn’t work for me at all. I was very excited and had a feeling of “coming home” when I learned about Wicca and Witchcraft in 1984. I have been a practicing Witch since 1986. I’m very, very good at it and the path is very spiritually uplifting for me. 18. My older three sons are all musically gifted and I am definitely not in the slightest. 19. I literally sobbed when Mr. Rogers died and when my friend, Sage, went away. 20. As a military wife, I lived at bases on Guam, in England, in New Mexico, in Idaho and in Southern California. I now live in Sacramento, California and it’s my favorite place to live in the world. 21. I never touched a computer until 1997 and had no idea how to set up a web page when Eye on Soaps was born in 2000. My son, Joe, gave me a crash course in Paint Shop Pro and Front Page and helped me set up the main shell. The rest emerged over a month of 22 hour days and computer monitor-induced blindness. 22. My son, Joe, lives in Victoria, British Columbia and has duel citizenship due to his marriage to Sandra, who is Canadian. 23. I have never seen “Old Yeller,” “The Color Purple” or several other movies because I refuse to watch a movie that is specifically set up to make me cry. 24. I won’t have a pet whose ass I can’t kick in a fight. 25. The only condiments I ever eat are salt, pepper and butter. No ketchup, mustard, mayo, relish, etc. Occasionally, I will eat light BBQ sauce. 26. I don’t like things that are a spoiled something else: no buttermilk, sour cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, etc. I only like cheese when it’s cooked, such as lasagna, pizza, potato skins and such. That makes Atkins a real bitch for me. 27. When I got married the first time, my mother and I took the artificial flowers from a local graveyard, kept track of the graves they were on, decorated the church, then later returned the flowers to their rightful places. 28. When I married my first husband the second time, I wore black since white hadn’t gotten me anywhere the first time. I should have changed husbands, not clothes. 29. When I was 13, I really believed that a peace sign was a “broken cross” and an anti-Christ symbol rather than the Germanic rune of protection that it is. 30. When I got married in 1978, I was terrified of people who drank. My mother and father convinced me that people who drink beat their wives and people who smoke, die of lung cancer. 31. I smoked for two years, then quit. I wasn’t very good at it. 32. I am an avid supporter of the nationwide legalization of medical marijuana. Based on my own extensive research and experience, I believe that marijuana should be legalized and alcohol should be a controlled substance. 33. I watch Star Trek, The Next Generation reruns around 5 nights a week. 34. I went for three years without watching prime time. 35. I don’t ever watch the news unless there’s an election. 36. I was not registered to vote until Arnold ran for Governor of California because since I turned 18, no one has ever run for office who I had any interest whatsoever in supporting. I’d rather not vote than participate in voting the wrong guy into office. 37. I’ve never served jury duty because every time I’ve been asked, I’ve had very small children at home and it was impossible. I will some day, however. 38. My youngest son has no middle name. David’s middle name is “Uriah” after my ex’s grandfather. Delena has two middle names, “Alexis” and “Katherine” because I couldn’t decide. 39. My middle name is “Marie.” 40. My first name came from my father mishearing the name of a ballerina named Katina Valiente (or something like that). My mother wanted to name me Lydia Jane. 41. My father was in the same Army hospital in Germany as Elvis Presley. 42. My grandfather could not say “Katrina” and from my birth until 1994, I was called “Kathy.” Several people from my hometown still call me Kathy. 43. My maiden name was Chapman and my grandfather was a direct descendent of the brother of John Chapman, the real Johnny Appleseed. 44. On a flight from Louisville to Dallas to San Francisco in 1978 I sat next to Mike Farrell from MASH (in coach, no less). 45. I have never flown anywhere first class, but plan to do that some day. 46. Once, on Guam, we couldn’t get a good parking place on July 4th to watch the fireworks over the bay, so we crept stealthily onto the back lawn of the governor’s mansion, smoked pot, ate oatmeal cookies and had a great view. 47. I went through a period of time in 1989 of compulsive shoplifting. I was never caught, but had a moment of clarity and swore off it forever, turning to compulsive eating instead. 48. I don’t like pastries, pancakes or doughnuts that aren’t Krispy Kreme. 49. When I was pregnant with Joe, I would get sick from things I saw on TV, like KFC commercials. I didn’t even have to smell it, just see it. 50. My mother couldn’t stand food smells when she was pregnant with Allen, my younger brother, and told me that toast and applesauce were what Jesus ate for breakfast. She could feed me those things without smelling anything that made her sick and I ate it voraciously given the Jesus connection. She craved strawberry ice cream with cherry tomatoes mixed in it. 51. When I was a little girl, I was sexually abused by my dentist, which is why I have a horrible aversion to dentistry as an adult. 52. My family raised chickens when I was growing up and my taunting name at school was “chicken farmer.” I never could bring myself to kill them, but I’ve dressed more chickens than I’ve ever wanted to remember (and I don’t mean dressed them in tuxes). 53. My first little girl crush was Gomer Pyle. He was just so niiice. 54. I was a David Cassidy girl, not a Donnie Osmond girl. 55. I could never turn cartwheels, do round-offs or any other flipping upside down activity. It just didn’t happen despite hours and hours of backyard hours logged in. 56. I have an absolutely irrational, blinding terror of snakes. 57. I have been to Hawaii four times. I like Hawaii. All four times were military flights between Guam and San Francisco. 58. I graduated from High School a year early via GED. I have a huge number of college credits, but nothing that can combine into a degree because I only took classes that interested me. 59. I can’t swim or roller skate, despite a million boyfriends insisting they could teach me. 60. I am an excellent cook. I mean really, really excellent. 61. I once had an article on why our mothers’ generation had difficulty breastfeeding that was published by Parent’s Magazine. 62. Five of my six babies have slept with me until they were a year old, some longer. All went easily into their own beds when it was time. 63. I have very, very little body hair and only have to shave my legs and pits about once a week. 64. I have spent many hours sleeping on the back of a motorcycle. I’ve slept standing up before. I love sleep, but being a single parent has spoiled that for me and I can’t seem to get back into the groove of really deep sleep. 65. I once went two months without swearing just to see if I could. Then I missed it (a lot) and resumed. I learned from the experience that while rampant swearing is crass, one must not discriminate against words as all have their inherent value. 66. My grandmother-in-law lives in the same condo complex as Oscar de la Jolla. 67. People who are afraid of balloons scare me a little. 68. In a Burger King with Delena last year, I saw a man screaming at his own reflection in the back of a CD. 69. I go through 4-5 candles a week. 70. My favorite incenses are “Dragon Cloud” by Airs and “Campfire Jam” by Grateful Dead Incense. 71. Religious intolerance and any form of child abuse/neglect (including the way people speak to their children) are the two things that piss me off more than anything. 72. I absolutely love TV and have a precise schedule that runs from 7am through 7pm. 73. I love several different kinds of music, but gravitate mostly to classic rock, country (I know almost no country that is recent) and new agey stuff. 74. I was 25 before I ever went on a roller coaster, despite many visits to theme parks that had him. 75. It really pisses me off to hear loud music coming out of cars. If I am in my car, I shouldn’t be able to hear the music from the car next to me louder than I can hear my own music. 76. I started an apprenticeship as a midwife in 1982, but had to leave the program when my ex got orders to England. 77. Out of three weddings and six children, I’ve only ever had 3 showers. One was a baby shower given by my cousins, one was a baby shower given by my coworkers at the preschool and one was a baby shower that, oddly, my mother-in-law brought with her from New Jersey after Nathan was born. 78. I’ve only had one birthday party in my adult life, one put on by my beautiful coven in 2002. I couldn’t stop crying the whole time. 79. I would not have been able to attend my mother’s funeral without the help of the EOS readers who came together to make it happen. 80. When I was a newborn, my parents were at an auction and a woman there offered to buy me for $10,000. 81. I am the only member of my birth family (mom, dad, 2 brothers) who has never weighed over 300 pounds). 82. Because of my basic lack of affinity for animals, I was at a deadlock when asked what my totem animal was, so I deemed it to be George Clooney. I figure he visits me in dream time and vision time and our spirits soar together. He represents strength, wisdom, a glint of God in his eye and a definite animal presence. He's mine. I've claimed him in the name of the Goddess as my totem animal. Plus, I think I could take him in a fight. 83. I am very challenged in the raising of houseplants. I’ve killed all but one struggling little pothos and a (for reasons unknown) thriving umbrella plant that keeps outgrowing its pot. Everything else dies. Quickly. 84. I can’t say the word “Chernobyl” without first thinking hard about it and working syllable by syllable. If I just try and say it outright, it always comes out “Cherbonyl.” 85. By my second year of living in England I had developed a British accent so strong it took me six months of American living to lose it and get my southern accent back. 86. While in England (1982-85), I became quite an ace at darts. I never had to buy drinks at the pub because I would win them all in games of darts. I was even on the pub dart league. 87. I have two tattoos: a butterfly on top of my left wrist and another butterfly on my left boob. 88. In the mid-late 1980’s, my ex and I were in a motorcycle club called “The Roadmasters.” I was one of only two female members in the history of the group and my nickname was “Tits.” >:< 89. I have read Tarot cards for 18 years, have written one book on the subject and I’m really, really good at it. 90. I hate malls and only go in them under the most dire of circumstances (or to attend a movie because sadly, my favorite theater is in the Sunrise Mall). 91. From 1991 – 2000, I lived in 12 different homes, 6 from 91-94 and 6 from 96-2000. 92. I literally have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books, probably well over a thousand. I have a passion for books that is unbelievable. 93. Although purely speculative, I am 99.5% sure that if I were really, really rich, I would still shop at thrift shops and garage sales, just not exclusively like now. 94. If I ride backward in any vehicle, I get sick. I also can never, ever read while in motion or puking will ensue. 95. My 7th grade math teacher was arrested for kidnapping himself. (click here bottom entry) 96. I have seen every episode of “Dynasty” and “Dallas,” even the horrible last few episodes of Dynasty. 97. I hate reality shows (so I hold a grim outlook for my TV future), but did enjoy “The Joe Schmo Show.” Go figure. I’ve never watched “Survivor,” “Big Brother,” “The Bachelor” or any of the others. I did watch a couple of episodes of “Surreal World” by accident. 98. When my children are older, I plan to aggressively begin a professional writing career. Before then, I can’t commit into deadlines. I can barely get my writing done for the site (and lord knows thedivadigest.com needs updating) and with that, I have the luxury of putting it off if needed. 99. After 6 years of marriage, I am still absolutely batshit, starry-eyed, leaping heart stupid in love with my husband. Even on our worst day of arguing, I’d still marry him again. 100. I am amazingly, stunningly proud of each of my children in very different ways and they keep me in awe every single day.
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