15 Facts About the Real Melanie

A sneak peak behind my public persona. 1. I HATE scary movies. As soon as the music rises ominously, I start pacing. Once in a movie theatre, at The Lord of the Rings, I jumped and managed to throw  quarts  of popcorn in a 4′ radius all around us. It landed in people’s hair, on their coats… everywhere. My husband has never let me hold the popcorn again.

2. I am  the  definitive  bookworm. I read at least 5 books a week till I was 15, stopping only if I had too much homework to keep it up. My mother used to beg me on nice summer days to, “At least read outside!” Sometimes, to limit my late night reading, I have read perched on the edge of a cold tub, only to realize 2 hours later that I am frozen and can hardly walk.

3. I love STRONG tea, butter tarts and red wine and cilantro. I love old houses and restoring their beauty, gardening, big windows and old pine floors.

4. Someone told my mother that I was cute but my sister would be beautiful! I am short, 5’1″ and 104lb. I was a cute  little  kid (the grade six girls wanted to cart me around like a doll ),  a cute new mother, at 57, my kids’ friends think I am cute and they are 16/17 and I will be a cute, little old lady. Doomed to be  forever cute.

5. I have a sadistic streak. The times I have laughed the hardest concern my husband and bathtubs. Once Michael was stuck in a too small bathtub, trying to rinse his hair with a  princess  shower head without getting any water on the floor. The second hilarious incident was when he was stuck in a cold bath, with his leg sticking straight out in a cask, while I attempted to haul him up! Both times I laughed so hard that I ended up on the floor. My husband did not even smile.

6. My athletic skills are dismal. Michael, my athletic husband finally gave up on trying to find a sport to suit me when he realized that the only possible choices were a very gentle game of badminton or crochet but even that was a stretch.

7. At 13, I played Becky Thatcher in a Tom Sawyer musical even though I really can’t sing. I also I had to kiss him in front of the school, then night performances, a televised production and sing on a record. I STILL cringe at the memory.

8. I can’t spell, type, and I am basically just entering the 21st century’s computer world. So what would be the most difficult dream be to fulfill? Why, become a writer and of course this is the path I find myself on.

9. I love my husband and my kids. I love play dough, looking for bugs, colouring, reading kids books and making doll houses. I really need lots of grandkids.

10. I am eccentric, living on the margins of society and I love quirky, intellectual nerds with a sense of humour. I often laugh in the face of tragedy. It works for me.Only my parents  really  get my humour.

11. God has managed to heal and love me in spite of myself and I could weep in gratitude for His patient mercy.

12. If it was not for my daughters buying me clothes, cutting and dying my hair and teaching me about make-up, I would look very frumpy.

13. I was pregnant and nursing, often both, for 18 years without a break. My husband says he saved me from becoming a nun librarian.

14. I am an inefficient square, trying to force myself to roll through chores like a circle. I just recently have begun to take delight in my inefficiency.

15. I  need  to start drawing and painting again.

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