That weird facts meme, and I promise I won’t do another!

Since I started this blog, lo these many days ago, I have an unstated rule – no chains, no memes.  I didn’t mean to do it, but Margaret asked so nicely and I like reading the stories folks come up with, so I’ll do this one, this time, and that’s it!  

Here are the rules:
1) Post these rules before you give your facts
2) List 8 random facts about yourself
3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

 #1 Tonight, the reheating cheese pizza flipped itself from the rack to the cookie sheet below, without leaving cheese on the rack.  The cheese on the rack is from the piece that stayed up and right side up.  This may not be a fact about me, but you’re getting it anyway.

#2 I don’t have a middle name.  At least, I didn’t until I got married and put my previous name in the middle.  The Kid and my husband don’t have middle names either.  My husband has plenty, though, with two last names.  When we were married, the State of Alabama automatically changed my last name.  Without asking!  And of course, whoever processed the paperwork didn’t read the hyphen he put between his two last names, you know, to keep from losing the paternal surname to middlenamehood.  So the State named me incorrectly and I got to change my name.  Wasn’t as hard as you’d think.

#3 We lived rent-free in Sausalito, when we first moved back to California while I was in nursing school.  I had a lot of steps to walk down to the bus stop.  A lot.  Like four blocks worth of steps.  I only fell down twice, within the same minute. 

#4 Sanitary napkins/feminine hygiene products/pads have a few off-label uses.  I’ve used them for blister protection/good shoe fit and bandages for severely skinned knees (see end of #3) put together on the bus.

#5 During pregnancy, my caffeine metabolism changed drastically.  Twelve hours after a cup of coffee, I still felt the effects.  I’m closer to normal now, but I need to avoid chocolate and coffee after about 3 pm.

#6 When one of my beloveds is good at something and does it a lot, I delude myself into thinking I do it too, or know a lot about it.  I’m particularly deluded when it comes to things my mother does.  For example, I think I quilt.  I don’t, actually, but I have a fabric stash as if I did.

#7 For years, I couldn’t hear or read the word cacahuate* without turning it into alcahueta**.  Crema de alcahueta*** is not something you want on a sandwich.  This is an unforeseen side effect of studying Spanish Golden Age literature and writing papers on La Celestina.  Oddly enough, I read a lot of old Spanish, not Latin American, literature while working on my BA.  I had a great professor (not that the other professors weren’t wonderful in their own ways).

*peanut  

**sort of a matchmaker, but in this play, a rather immoral kind setting up protected virtuous very young ladies with men who weren’t interested in keeping them virtuous – in an age in which losing virtue was disastrous for self and even more for the male family members  

***not quite peanut butter

#8 I am fluent in Spanish in odd ways.  I am best with food, tuberculosis, childbirth, breastfeeding, child development, and old Spanish literature.  And cursing like a Mexican cook.

It stops here.  (I’ll make a virtue out of not knowing enough bloggers to pass it on to.)