David Bowles at Writing the Western Sagas tagged me to tell five things about myself you probably don’t know. Then I get to tag five more bloggers by leaving comments on their blogs, and they tell five things about themselves, and each tag five more, and on, and on, and on.
If you read this blog and have been to my Web site, you probably already know more about me than you really want to know. But you probably don’t know:
1. I’m one of “110,000 of the nation’s most noteworthy people” included in Who’s Who in America®. You’re probably wondering how that happened; Who’s Who is supposed to list important people. Actually, I’m wondering the same thing. Back when I started my interior landscape business, women entrepreneurs were rare. Somehow I ended up in some of the regional (South and Southwest) and specialty (American Women, Finance and Industry) Who’s Who editions that Marquis publishes. Then in 2000, I made it to the big time: Who’s Who in America. My husband was so impressed that we bought a copy of the book. Since then, I’m notified that I’m in each new issue, but I can’t say for sure because I’ve never looked at another edition.
2. My first editing assignment came about because I wrote to a publisher expressing disappointment in the poor editing of some books I read. The company (which was new and small) recognized it had a problem, and instead of taking offense at my unsolicited criticism, hired me to edit some of their books.
3. I finished Southwestern University in three years with one summer semester at San Antonio College (SAC – a community college). My husband and I were married between the end of the regular school year and the start of summer school. SAC allowed me to take the first and second semesters of American history simultaneously so I could finish the six hours I lacked for my degree in one semester. But since Southwestern didn’t have summer school and had graduation only in the spring, I officially graduated the following year.
4. My degree is in sociology with a minor in psychology, and my first job was as an employment counselor in one of the poverty programs of the 1970s. That job involved a number of adventures: I visited a client in jail and testified in court for her. I was the last person to talk to a Vietnam veteran with a mental disability before he robbed a fast food restaurant and slit the throat of the manager. A client’s irate wife came to the office and asked to see me; when she opened her purse the receptionist saw she was carrying a gun; my boss got her out of the building without any trouble. I was sent home early one day because a man whose application for a training program I rejected threatened to be waiting at my car with his “piece” when I left work. One of my clients (an 18-year-old girl) told me she took her baby to the emergency room, and “they kept my baby!” It turns out she had baby-sat the child two years ago when he was a tiny infant and she and the baby had disappeared when the parents returned. Her explanation to me: “I prayed to God for a baby, and He gave me a baby.”
5. My husband and I have been married for nearly 40 years, and we’re both perfectionists (some would say obsessive-compulsive) … but in different ways. Jack likes all the labels on the cans in the cabinet to face forward; I don’t pay attention to what direction the labels are facing. I like everything organized and put away; he likes everything out where he can see it so he can find it. Of course, he has so much out where he can see that he can’t find anything!
OK – enough about me. Now I’m tagging five more bloggers to tell five things we don’t know about them:
Robin Bayne at Between Sundays
Vikk Simmons at Down the Writer’s Path
Georganna Hancock at Writer’s Edge
Denise Jacleen at Freelance Writing
Evelyn Bourne at a productive pen
These ladies are bound to have interesting things to share.
[tags]five things, tag, meme, writers, Who’s Who, college, jobs[/tags]