My Name's Carrie...

...and here are four more things you might not know about what makes me, me.

While growing up, if one of Mom's kids had a bad attitude, she would look at us and say, "BA [insert first and middle name here]." And we knew that meant that it was time to clean up the attitude or be subjected to the palm of Mom's hot little hand. When my sister graduated from college with a Bachelor of Arts, my oldest brother looked at her and said, "Now you officially have a B.A. - and a paper to prove it." For the record, I graduated with a B.S., so I do not officially have a BA (but it's been known to unofficially appear and I have been known to say to myself, "BA, Carrie" - and that still helps me snap out of it). 

My brother gave me three goldfish for Christmas when I was 5 and I sincerely wanted to name them, "Mary", "Joseph", and "Jesus" since it was - after all - Christmas. My family immediately put the kabosh on that idea, so I settled for "Larry", "Darrell", and "Carol" for two reasons. 1) My parents are Larry and Carol. How special they must have felt to have fish namesakes. 2) One of my favorite shows at the time (outside of watching The Cosby Show on Thursday nights) was Newheart. Even as a child, Larry, Darrell, and Darrell always made me laugh. 

As a reader and collector of books, I have a few goals - one of them is to find the original Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books - the ones written in the 1920's and 30's. I own one original Nancy Drew (written in 1932) and it's about twice the thickness of the newer versions and uses words that I have to look up in a dictionary. Seriously. I'd LOVE to have more of these!

Fact #4: I don't like loaning out books or movies. I know it's totally selfish and pure ugliness on my part, but I kind of feel like if you take my book/DVD and you either don't return it or give it back scratched, you should replace it. So...after a few bad experiences, I stopped loaning things. I'm ashamed to admit that selfish side of me as I sit here and read what I've just shared, but if you want to get to know the real me, that's certainly part of it. I've gotten a lot better about viewing all that we have as being "on loan" to us from God (we're just the caretakers), and understanding that it's just stuff...and if you break a glass or a mug in my house, I will not make you feel bad because I really don't care. Take one of my books and lose it? I might have to hurt you. Hey, I'm not perfect, but God's still working on me!

Until next time...