Eight things about me

The lovely Kris has tagged me to do this 8 things meme. I have to admit that I have never before memed nor am I sure that I can think of eight random things about me that are sufficiently interesting to recount. It's also taken me an embarrassingly long time to get around to this. Sorry Kris! Anyway, these are the rules.

A. Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves.

B. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed.

C. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Here goes:

1. I'm very judgmental when it comes to coffee. I remember being completely appalled when I first moved to Brisbane. Not only was the coffee terrible but it was nearly always served in a glass chalice with a great big long swizzle stick of a spoon. But for all the times I've hated a coffee, and resented the lack of care and attention that went into making it, I've never once sent one back.

2. I have a completely hopeless memory when it comes to day to day stuff. I can barely remember things from one day to the next. I am one of those people who needs to write everything down or else it will not be done or remembered. And it's not just trivial house or work stuff that I forget - whole decades of my life are nothing but a haze. But if you're after the names of the planets, the colours of the rainbow, the periodic table, a perfect recital of one of a fairly large number of poems, the scientific names of plants, the world's longest palindrome, well...I'm your girl. I've always wondered if this a sign of true left-handedness or just some form of degenerative brain disease. Apparently you can only tell if you have a brain scan.

3. I am a very, very tidy person, but only in spurts. In between I am very, very messy. The one place that is consistently tidy and clean is the chook shed. I get the most extraordinary pleasure from sweeping out the old bedding and floor coverings, digging it into one or another fallow vege garden bed and bringing in armfuls of fresh, clean hay. If I were a chook I would love hanging out in that cosy little house.

4. I have a hard time being decisive. I do so much thinking but I really can't bear to commit to an outcome just in case there is a better one I just haven't thought of yet. This is currently driving me nuts in the garden. I plan and think and sketch and draw and pace and plan. Then I plant. Then I think and pace and draw. Then I move whatever I planted to its new 'better' location. Then move it again. What if my pursuit of the perfect garden means I'll never have a real one?

5. I have always wanted to live on a farm, with chooks, dogs, kids, a vege patch, a big rambling garden and a friendly herbivore or two. It seemed like it would be the perfect life - full of life, and the beginnings and endings of things. Now I do, and it is wonderful. I am grateful every day for the opportunity to live like this in such a beautiful place. But every day I also think of my friends and my family, and wish that we could all find a way to be fewer miles apart. When I was younger it was all about the places. The older I get the more I understand that it is really about the people.

6. I am a big fan of the uniform. I have often contemplated making myself a uniform that I could wear every day. It would, one hopes, be stylish, sophisticated and interesting, but would take all the work out of it.

7. When Martha was littler than she is now, and we were both up for much of the night, Mark started bringing me a cup of tea in bed in the morning, and minding Martha while I sipped it...very slowly. Martha sleeps a lot better these days, only waking once or twice at most, but I'm still getting my cup of tea. It's one of my favourite times - sitting up in bed, by myself, looking out over the ranges to the distant horizon and imagining the many possible paths to the other end of the day. I guess it's only a matter of time before Martha starts to sleep through. I wonder what will happen to my cup of tea then? I think about this every morning, and often find myself, as Amber once said, 'nostalgic for now'.

8. I am absolutely appalling at opening food or drygoods packaging of any kind. It's a strange kind of selective impatience, because I will spend ten minutes prising apart sticky tape if I want to save wrapping paper. I think it's also because I'm not very good at following rules, including all those little dotted lines and scissor clipart and directives to 'open on the other side' so beloved of food manufacturers. My paternal grandmother Ena was the same. I can remember sitting, horrified, across the kitchen bench from her while she opened a carton of milk - by hacking the whole top off, in great jagged strokes, with a carving knife.

Okay, that's eight. As for tagging others, well, I'm only going to tag two - Amber and Tabitha. Maybe they can tag 16 each to make up for me!