Can you believe this? Ted tagged me in a meme? I feel both honored and dismayed at the same time.

Honored because Ted tagged me. How he decided who to tag I’m not sure – could be something simple like he decided to tag the last five people who made comments on the blog, but I’d like to think that maybe he’s actually been reading my blog and that’s why I got tagged. I’m dismayed because … well he can’t be reading my blog, or he missed a few posts, because I just got tagged with the same meme by Skeet, another blogger, last week.

So here’s how it works -Ted tagged me and I have to share 5 things that most people don’t know about me. When I’m done I have to tag 5 more people and they should do the same. Now, I didn’t tag anyone last week – I was being nice since it was the holidays and all, but this time I think that I’ll tag Mr Fab, Shelli, Doc Mom, and let me see – I’ll pick two from the P blogroll – How about Brian Reilly, and Jessie from Hunna’s Happenings.

Lets see 5 things that you don’t know about me? I think I’ll write this one more for my fellow posties since many of them don’t know me that well yet:

1. Like Ted I’ve been renovating my home too. Well, my husband Chris and I have been renovating. We’re at a bit of a standstill right now – we were in the process of completing our living room two years ago when we both became seriously ill. Chris is better now but I’m still sick.

We had venetian plastered our living room, after knocking out the stairway wall. The living /dinning room looks so much bigger now without that wall blocking off a portion of the room. We are stalled at putting in a tin ceiling in the living room / dinning room. We have the Tin ceiling pieces, and I’ve painted and antiqued them – they’re going to look fantastic when they are up. It’s just getting them up that has us stalled. Once they are up we’re going to put wide molding along the walls at ceiling level, put our wide baseboards back up and put a really nice fluted wood frame around the front door.

In the time that we’ve been living in this house, 5 years, we have pulled out all of the carpeting, painted every room, refinished the white oak hardwood floors, tore down the walls in our bedroom to insulate them better and then venetian plastered that room, and totally landscaped our front and backyards – creating a garden that causes people walking by our home to wander down the driveway just to take a look.

The last project that we managed to compete was to put a skylight into our enclosed front porch. We also put up new bead board on the walls and ceiling which I had stained and oiled. Then I painted the inside of the skylight a sky blue and painted some puffy clouds so that no matter what time of year it is, whenever we look outside – if it’s through the skylight, we always see blue skies.

Chris and some friends after they cut the whole in the porch roof for the skylight:

The finished skylight:

I think I toned down the clouds a bit since then – they are quite subtle now. Everyone that sees the skylight and the nicely finished enclosed porch really likes it.

2. Hmm what else can I tell you? Lets see – I’m an emergency room nurse – so nothing phases me! But as I said earlier I’m off work due to illness and I haven’t actually been to work for over a year. I miss it terribly. I love my job and the people I work with and I enjoy helping the patients too.

3. Before I became a nurse I was a Jeweller. No I didn’t sell jewelry. Well I did sell to my family and friends, but I didn’t have a store. No I was a jewelry trades person, which means that I was one of the people that actually makes the jewelry that you love to wear, and buy at this time of year.

I was a diamond cutter. I cut designs in gold with a diamond. One of my machines had several diamonds in a holder and they spun at 35,000 rotations per second to make the brightest sharpest cuts on the wedding bands, bracelets and pendants that I put bright cut designs on. I also used a diamond flywheel that I held in my hand – the piece looked a bit like one of those drills that dentists use when they drill a hole in your tooth to fix a filling, and it sounded like it too. With that tool I could get a little bit more creative and create one of a kind designs by hand.

My business was called Gold Cuts and I started it when I was just 20 years old. Yeah, while all my friends were out partying I was working 18 hour days developing my business. My sister is also a jeweler and we shared office space together. She’s still in the business. Oh and I met Chris, my husband, while I was in the jewelery trade. He was a jeweler too. He set stones, and did jewelery repairs.

4. Prior to my being a jeweler, during and for a bit after, I also did some acting stints and got my make up artist certificate. I’ve been in commercials and movies – never staring in them though, and unfortunately most often as an extra, but it was fun.

5. I’m a klutz. I always have been, and unfortunately I probably always will be. This year for some reason I’ve had a few bad falls. I’m not sure but I think the medicine that I take might have been part of the reason for my falls, that or my just plain being sick and feeling weak.

Either way, last March I fell flat on my face, or rather directly on my chin. I hit the ground so hard that the skin and tissue split to the bone. That hurt! Now I have a scar at the base of my chin that looks a bit like those bad scars you see on hockey players with the stitch lines in it and everything. Yuck.

Then, this past July, on my husbands birthday, I tripped on a strange curb that I didn’t see while walking on a dark street and landed hard on my knees. I guess my right knee took the brunt of it as it swelled up with fluid right away. The swelling didn’t go down until the end of September and now, while my knee is healed for the most part, it still makes the most interesting, loud crunchy noises when I stretch it out. it’s also given out on me a few times recently when I’ve stood up. Guess I’d better get that checked out as I probably did tear the AC with those kinds of symptoms.

I’m just hoping that I can make it to the end of the year without another bad fall or something strange happening. I’ve always got something weird going on! LOL