I Hate Chain Letters but I Love Good Bloggers

Jo Heroux over at My Wandering Mind has nominated me for "The Versatile Blogger" award for my writing. Jo is a perfectly lovely person who comments encouragingly on my blog with regularity and has the sweetness of spirit to write poems about roses and to invest them with the same appreciation which first caused human beings to associate roses with the ideas of love. What's more, Tangled Lou of Periphery, a gale force tempest of a blogger herself, has in the same short week, included me in a list of far finer writers than I as recipients of "The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award."

First, I can neither be aptly described as "versatile" or as "irresistibly sweet" nor would I have thought my writing could be. Additionally, I have neither received nor been nominated for any actual award that I can recall since...since...since I received a certificate of participation for middle school girls wrestling. 

This is a shocking surprise. So much so, that I was not sure at first what the appropriate response was supposed to be. My initial concern was that these awards would turn out to be virtual bags of steaming dog shit, and then I will have thanked Jo and Suzanne for making fun of me in front of the Internet. How embarrassing. (This is not intended to be a slight against either of their kind natures. I cannot honestly imagine either woman enjoying poking fun at anyone.)

The awards, such as they are seem to have retained their current forms, so I will attempt to overcome my crawling aversion to anything that smacks of a chain letter and go ahead and nominate some bloggers in their turn for both awards at the same time. I hate chain letters, psychobabble cults, multi-level marketing schemes and when people urge you to dedicate your Facebook status to kittens for an hour so that all kittens will live. But I love good bloggers. And I owe a debt of gratitude to those that I read and who read me, since I couldn't do it without them. Truly–we are like a Quaker Society who Tweet and drop f-bombs. 

The rules for both award recipients are similar. I must divulge seven items of random information about myself. I am not going to make you read through fourteen. That would be wrong.

Rules for the Versatile Blogger Award (yes, you can ignore this)

In a post on your blog, nominate 15 fellow bloggers for The Versatile Blogger Award.
In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award. (not possible on Blogger, but they can come and get it from the page!)
In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.
In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself.
In the same post, include this set of rules.

Seven things you might not know about me~

1) My name is pronounced with a short a, rather than a long one. This is because I am "Tara, Mother of Compassion" of Tibetan fame (Google it) rather than Tara from Gone with the Wind, or Tara or ancient Ireland. This is hardly intuitive, since I look as if I could easily be Irish. I'm not. My people hail from many places, including Wales and Scotland, but not–I'm afraid–Ireland. My whole life people have been mispronouncing my name. I am not bitter in the least.

2) Number of times I have made it into into my driveway and been unable to drive back out because the car was out of gas: five. (Maybe it was more.)

3) When I was in college, I took a Psych 101 course. I disliked the instructor of this course because he dumbed down the material, which I found interesting, and made jokes about anorexics. Because of this, and because I was totally disorganized, I rarely bothered to attend the class with consistency, even on the day chapter tests were given. The policy governing this was that the test could be taken open book on the day it was scheduled but, if made up, was to be taken closed book. I took all my tests in his office closed book and got 100% on all of them. This tells you something both about my untapped ability (then, not now) to memorize and understand material and about my commitment to do things as I am told to.

4) When I was seven, I discovered that I had come from a planet far away which I called Scissilla. At my "birth" here, I had passed through a magic waterfall by use of a malachite ring and was reborn to a human family. Slowly I realized that my purpose here on this plane was to save humanity from its own evil and destruction. I continued to believe in the existence of Scissilla and the complicated mythology surrounding it until I entered middle school and spent many years writing and illustrating its history. My parents were so kind as not to put me on anti-psychotics, and later I became a writer.

5) I once kept five pet rats in my parents' kitchen after I had moved away from home. They lived in a cage the size of an enormous dollhouse with no bottom, so that all the turds and wood chips fell on the floor. My parents are very nice people.

6) Number of times I have locked myself out of my own house and had to break in: approximately 36.

7) I secretly believe astrology is true, even though I am otherwise a totally un-superstitious person. I am a Gemini. Doesn't that just explain everything?

I am not listing 15 bloggers. Jo and Suzanne have already nominated many of the blogs I read, which is awkward, but I am delighted to introduce these others you, of which you may not have heard. Or perhaps you have. So sue me.

B's Stings

Angela Parson Myers

Just a Mum?

Mothers of Brothers

She Lies Shattered

The M Half of the M-n-J Show

Part of the Plan

I recommend you check these people out right now.