When the sun returns

Young mother with her young son

It has been really dark and rainy in my part of the country lately. Although many of my blogging friends are complaining about their weather being warm and dry right now, it's not that way here in the Pacific Northwest, believe me! I can hear the rain drumming on the roof right now, and the days are so short that it seems the sun seems to barely come up before it goes down again. It's that time of year, but in a few short days the light will begin to return and the days will grow imperceptibly longer. By the end of January, I'll notice the lengthening of the days until summer, when the nights are barely there. It's all part of the circle of life.

I've used that picture before. It was taken by my then-husband Don of Chris and me on one snowy day in winter in the early 1960s. We lived in Michigan and took many walks together back then. Don has since passed away, and those two people in the picture are also long gone. One of them is me, but I am no longer a young mother, and Chris died when he was 40. But I still have the picture and the memories.

MerCyn of Six Decades and Counting gifted me with a blog award, after she herself was so honored. The link will take you to her post telling you about the award and why she has passed it along. Back in my early days of blogging, these awards went around quite often, and now I find that although I am happy to play along by telling you seven things about myself, I am not willing to single out five of my fellow bloggers. I did that for awhile, though, being someone who follows rules, even arbitrary ones. If you wish to have this award, I would be happy to send it along to you! Just let me know.

Let's see: seven things about myself that you are not likely to know already. That limits it, doesn't it, because I've told so much about myself in the blogosphere, but here goes:

1. I've made 4,150 skydives in the past twenty-some years. You probably already knew that, but I still find it rather astounding myself.
2. I was married and divorced three times by my thirtieth birthday, but now I've been married to Smart Guy for longer than all three of those earlier ones combined. This one took. 
3. During my lifetime, I have colored my hair every shade imaginable, from champagne blond to jet black, with red and even blue in the mix. Now white hair suits me quite well.
4. I have a collection of teddy bears. My favorite one belonged to my mother and is very well worn, missing an eye and a few other parts.
5. I haven't carried an actual purse in three decades, using a backpack instead, but I call it my purse. That is what was stolen out of my car last Christmas Eve.
6. Even though I experience some daily discomfort, I consider it normal to have aches and pains and take no medication for it on a regular basis. If it gets bad enough I'll take something, but I know that none of those medications are without some cost to my body.
7. I wake sometimes with the most amazing dreams and could be a best selling novelist if I would ever write them down. 

Whew, that was fun, but it was also work. I had no idea that those items would be the ones I would choose, and I'm positive that now I will think of others and wonder why I didn't choose them! It's funny to think of myself in the abstract like that, figuring that my regular readers probably know most of these facts about me. It's a good thing I'm an extrovert. Of course, this blog is all about me and my life anyway.

Thank you, MerCyn, for the opportunity to fish around in my psyche and come up with some items you might not have known about me. It was quite a good exercise, so if any of my readers want to do the same, I can recommend it as an interesting activity, spending some time searching around for seven obscure things about yourself to share.