8 random facts

The lovely and eloquent Seahorse tagged me for this meme, which thrills me because it suggests she may be lurking around here just as much as I'm lurking over at her blog. Hi Seahorse! (waving furiously!)

Here are the rules:
Let others know who tagged you
Players start with 8 random facts about themselves
Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts
Players should tag 8 other people and tell them they've been tagged.

Fact #1: In the murky backchannels of blogland, I was just telling Magpie that I have a secret identity as a childbirth educator that I needed to confess the next time a meme like this rolled around. I have absolutely no time to teach classes, but it's something that matters a lot to me. These days, what winds up happening is folks at the mom's support center in the next block tell women considering homebirth that I'm happy to talk to them and they come by the store.

Fact #2: I have a a total of 13 first cousins who have a wide range of experiences that aren't my own: two are biracial, two are adopted, one lives in France, one is a serious skier, one is a cop, two are involved behind the scenes in movies, one is a childless housewife, one is turning 5 soon, none are Jewish. Two--from different sides of my family and more than ten years apart in age--are currently at the same college, in the same year.

Fact #3: My taste in shoes is extremely similar to Phantom's.

Fact #4: I have incipient osteoarthritis in my right wrist. I was diagnosed when I was 25.

Fact #5: I am trained as a massage therapist. I've never practiced much because of my wrist--massage turns out to be the thing that pushes the arthritis over the edge, and if I'd kept it up I would have needed to give up knitting or typing. But I'm happy to help with sore shoulders from time to time.

Fact #6: Technically, I am still a brown belt in tae kwon do, even though I quit when I was twelve.

Fact #7: My experience is limited, but I appear to be a natural with firearms. I spent one morning shooting at targets out in the country on the morning of a friend's wedding and all of her family friends were calling me Sharpshooter when I showed up in my long black dress for the ceremony and reception.

Fact #8: I am at least the fourth generation in my family to have my middle name. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my mother, me. Z. does not have it, but that doesn't mean I've decided to spare any future kids.

Now I need to tag people. This is actually more daunting than coming up with 8 facts, because I'm too shy to tag people who don't comment and I'm not sure I have 8 people who comment and actually do the meme thing ... and if you do, have you already done this one? And then I want to tag people I haven't tagged before. Anyway, after much deep pondering, I decided to just go with the last eight people who commented so long as I hadn't tagged them before, and let the chips fall where they may. Seems organic enough: Scrivener, Jody, Niobe, Phantom, Jo(e), Furrow, (Genevieve--no blog, you're off the hook!), E., and oneofhismoms. You're it.