Allison: Acknowledging the Acknowledgments

We’re under no delusions here at the blog that people actually read our ramblings. But every so often, someone pokes their head into our monologue and makes our day. We had a formal reader appreciation day not so long ago, so don’t worry, we won’t bore you with another, but we did get a couple formal shout-outs from fellow bloggers that we’d like to shout back to.

First, a special thanks to Christine Murray for her kind words about this blog a couple weeks ago. Christine is also a writer and more organized than I could ever hope to be. She frequently sets goals and largely manages to meet them or comes close. Her blog offers her thoughts and perspective as an aspiring writer.

We’ve also been tagged by Kathryn Long over at the Writer Teacher blog. Her award came with homework. For some reason the blogging world thinks it’s safe to instruct an ever-spreading web of bloggers to share random facts about themselves. We’re the crew that turned the dissemination of random thoughts into a verb…and a noun…and an adjective. But sadly, the instructions limit us to 7, so here goes.

#1: I play the harp professionally. Well, at least I do when I have a gig. I used to play a dozen or more weddings, receptions, dinners, and other special events a year. (Lately, I’ve just been dusting it a dozen or so times a year.)

#2: I lead a basement rock band called Penchant for Red. We’re better than we sound. Really.  But we have no ambitions to leave the basement. We just do it for the fame. Ok, no, not really. We just really like to play and write our own music, but we all have actual lives and jobs. Plus, with the exception of one of us, we are all way too old to be aspiring rock stars. Real rock stars, maybe. Aspiring ones, no. We did record some practice sessions though with a mid-range field recorder. You can check us out on Facebook. I think our page is still up. In fact, my first dabbling in the blogging world was as our band’s web voice.

#3: I like cats. I own two of them. I’ve owned cats my whole life. I’m allergic to them. I’ve felt like I’ve had a cold for the last twenty-eight years.

#4: For a family reunion many years ago, my relatives traced my ancestors back to Conrad Meckes who emigrated from Germany in the early 1700’s to what became the Pennsylvania region of what became the United States. That side of my family is still based there 275 years later. We’re not a very adventurous clan. My husband’s side is the opposite. His father emigrated from Germany. He was born and raised in Canada. And now his son is American, born in the Pennsylvania region of the United States.

#5: I am kind of a vegetarian by default. I have no moral or physical objections to meat, I just have a pathological aversion to gristle, veins, or any of the normal parts actually found in meat. I can meticulously pick my way through a grilled chicken breast, but at the first sign of any obstacle, the meal becomes my husband’s. It’s easier for all parties if I stick to the other food groups.

#6: The red streaks in my hair are not natural.

#7: This one is the reason I cannot formally accept the very award I’m acknowledging. I understand if they would like to replace my name with someone else and still appreciate them thinking of me. When I was a little girl, I used to get very stressed out by chain letters. I’d be so concerned that Jesus wouldn’t love me because I didn’t pass on a letter to 7 friends or my house was going to collapse because I didn’t give 9 people hugs by noon, that I found it necessary at an early age to establish a very strict no-chain letter policy. With the advent of e-mail and the flood of such requests, it has served me well into adulthood and I have followed it religiously my entire life. I don’t want to have to choose which chain letters are worth risking my eternal soul and which aren’t, so I don’t pass on any. Yes, that’s right, I’ve singlehandedly stopped every chain letter in existence. I don’t want to know how much bad luck I’ve accrued over the years, but at least it’s egalitarian. Still, my policy has brought me peace and serenity in the face of even the most gruesome descriptions of what will happen to me and my loved ones if I don’t forward some random message to 25 friends I don’t have. Since this award is basically the blog-version of a chain letter, my rule will not allow me to pass it on. I really do apologize for breaking the chain, but for every normal, perfectly rational person on this planet, there is a Me.

So thus ends our acknowledgements of our acknowledgements. Thanks to everyone for reminding me every so often that I’m not the only one reading my posts.