Tagged by Anne, it’s my turn at the meme going around the blogosphere this quiet pre-holiday week.

Five things you might not know about me:

1. I was thisclose to giving birth to Emily in the hospital parking lot. I was so afraid of having dragged-out, over-drugged labor that would end in a c-section like what happened with Laini, I stayed home a bit too long after I went into labor. Just 3 hours after my water broke, my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart. I still thought I had more time. Eric practically had to beg to get me to the hospital. I’m glad I listened when I did. I was holding Emily in my arms about 45 minutes after I walked in the hospital door, and my doctor made it there to catch her in the nick of time. No drugs. The hospital lost my pre-admission paperwork, so I’m holding my baby and the nurses are asking me, “so how do you spell your name?”

2. I couldn’t scale the O-Chem wall. I started college as a Chemistry major at Clarkson University, and was doing just fine until organic chemistry sophomore year. I was warned that it was the class that separated the scientists from the wannabes, and I fell by the wayside. Given the choice of trying to pass that class or do something different with my life, I transferred to art school the next semester. It was a choice that I have never regretted for a second.

3. My cats have always been named after Peanuts characters. Back when I could have cats (Eric is allergic), my cats were named Lucy, Linus and Woodstock (Woody, for short). Woody still lives with my mother. I found him as a 4 week-old kitten outside my apartment in Savannah, Georgia in August 1990. Anything that could be wrong with a kitten was wrong with this one (including a positive test for feline leukemia) but he survived (and didn’t have leukemia after all. I had to have him declawed as a condition of bringing him home.

4. I’ve only used my passport once, to Israel in 1986. I was involved in my college Hillel chapter, and won a mostly-expense-paid trip to Israel over one winter break. I had to interview for the program, and when accepted I paid just $450 for the entire trip. We covered the country in a week…a whirlwind trip. My passport expired 10 years ago and I never had a reason to renew it. I hope to have that reason sometime.

5. I’m an excellent knitter. I first picked up the needles as a teenager, and I go through spurts where I get obsessive about knitting. It’s all or nothing. I love really advanced cables and laces more than multi-colored knitting. I’ll knit nonstop for months, and then go years without doing a stitch. I’m in a knitting drought now, but I still get knitting catalogs in the mail just so I can stare at the stitches and imagine myself making the garment. It relaxes me.

You’re it: Erik, Phil, Jack, Liza, Wendy