So I’m going to take a lighthearted detour in which you learn a little bit more about me … although I don’t really know how much more transparent I can be … I bleed my heart all over this keyboard on a regular basis … and it’s usually not pretty.

So in an unofficial sort of blogging game slash chain letter, I have been nominated for the heretofore unknown to me Liebster Award. Lest you be impressed, it is for bloggers with a small {very small here, a whopping 26 subscribers} following and the idea is that this will result in a slight increase in readers, or at least a few new clicks.

Really, it just sounds fun, and my dear friend at betweenbluerocks asks questions I like to answer so indulge me.

Also, I am the proverbial watched pot over here {today is my due date and Second Son is standing his ground}, and this, just for a moment, distracts from the torture of counting false contractions.

So as I understand it, to comply I must provide you with L’Trivia Du Moi as well as answers to some questions set forth by the nominator.

Without further ado.

Previously Unmentioned and Utterly Useless Facts About Me: 

• The place I feel most at home … other than with my love and babes … is the front seat of a helicopter, which, alas, is no longer an option for me. 
• My top ten favorite books, aside from the Bible, in no particular order: A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken. East of Eden, John Steinbeck. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas. Rilla of Ingleside, L.M. Montgomery. Beach Music, Pat Conroy. A Separate Peace, John Knox. A Rumor of War, Philip Caputo. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara Robinson. The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein, and Surprised By Joy, C.S. Lewis. And in a final caveat … pretty much anything any of these authors have written I have loved and devoured. 
• I write poetry … not very well, I’m afraid. But I write it. 
• I love to garden. I’m terrible at it. But I am emotionally invested in growing flowers. They feed my soul. 
• I am an extrovert with a capital E. I need relationships like I need food. {I don’t think that is really unknown … }.
• I also love to snowboard {terrible at it and haven’t been in a long time}, have two tattoos, and secretly love eyebrow piercings. And I recently went through a stage where I seriously considered purchasing jumping stilts. 
• I think my Husband fell in love with me because I watch Sportscenter. Everyday. 
• I am obsessed with color, yarn, and all things textile. 
• Alaska feels like home to us. 
• The written word has a mesmerizing effect on my soul. And I can read it lightning fast. 
• I live for grace, Truth, and storytelling. And my precious family. 

Enough? There’s lots more, but most of it you know already. I don’t play my cards too close to the vest.

Answers to the Questions Posed by betweenbluerocks:

1. A line (or two) of a poem that resonates with you? (If not a poem, a song lyric will do.)

Bear with me … I am going to share one full poem and a line or some from a second, third and fourth. I have trouble editing. But I’m not going to tell you why. Imagining why is so much more intriguing.

                    Sonnet XXX

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be.  I do not think I would.

~From Fatal Interview, Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

I have a closet full of them/saving them for some giant mosaic where all the pieces will fit/just so/and one day I’ll do it,/glue them together, probably/bleed on the sharp ones,/break a few of the fragile ones.

~From “Poetry Shards” by Anne Carroll George

 

I know our history/is written in light years/and the murmuring tongue/of the Gulf. I know/below us continents shift./But this clear night/you and I are together/and the stars/how lightly they tether us.

~From “Nightrun” by Anne Carroll George

 

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

~From Holy Sonnets, by John Donne

 

And also, the whole Nobel Prize acceptance speech given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Not poetry, but resonates.

2. Something on your currently-reading list, and why it’s there? 

3. The destination of your most recent journey?

A quick day trip around Lake Barkley in KY with my sweet little family. The maiden voyage of the summer for our humble pontoon boat.

4. Something you’re pretty sure you’ll never read, and why?

J.K. Rowling’s most recent novel, The Casual Vacancy … a book club selection I missed, and from the subsequent discussion, thankfully so. I need a little more redemption in my stories.

5. If you could wake up tomorrow the possessor of advanced skills on any musical instrument, which would you choose?

The violin. So many voices in one small instrument.

6. A regionalism that forms part of your ordinary vocabulary? (And does it belong to the region you inhabit?)

There are bits of the South {my origins} that sneak in, especially when I’m tired. And while we currently reside there, I am a natural mimic and tend to imitate the speech patterns I am around the most.

Sidenote: I have been told before that I write smarter than I talk. I am not quite sure what to make of that.

So there you are. More than you ever wanted to know … now to pass it on … feel free to join in … or not … I had fun … and think you might as well … consider yourself nominated for the Liebster Award.

1.  A Rearranged Life
2. Of Dandelions and Daffodils
3. this is our gypsy camp
4. Dig Toes In
5. Raggle Taggle

Questions For Those Tagged:

1. Top Five-ish Favorite Books
2. In two sentences or less, why you blog.
3. Where have you most felt like home in your lifetime?
4. What decade would you choose to live in other than the current one? Why?
5. What is your biggest fear and do you feel like you’ve conquered it?
6. Lyrics from a favorite song. And a favorite musical act or two.

Thanks for indulging … and check out my friends.

~M.