TAGGED!

Coffee Bean from The Righteous Buzz left me the following comment on Saturday: "You are TAGGED!"

So I sprinted on over to her blog to see what was involved in this tag. Here are the rules:
• Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules in your post.
• Share seven random/weird facts about yourself.
• Tag seven random people and link to their blogs.
• Let each person know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment in their blog.

So I've been thinking about seven weird/random facts (that I can share!) about myself all weekend, so here goes:

1) I was born on a beautiful tropical island, yet I have a phobia of deep water...basically any water above my head. Even though I *know* how to swim, I panic. As for lakes and oceans, of course I worry about being in that water! Who knows what is down there?!

2) I met, got engaged, and married my husband after knowing him for 10 1/2 weeks! Our first date was one week after we met, we got engaged after 6 weeks, and married 4 weeks later! AND Steve hadn't met my dad until we visited him our honeymoon AND I met Steve's mom the day before our wedding. Steve & I will be celebrating our 13th Wedding Anniversary this next weekend! The best news is: we love and respect each other more now than we did 13 years ago. I wouldn't recommend that route for everyone, but we prayed about marrying each other and both felt that it was right, so we did. It was the best thing I ever did.

3) I lived on a 120 acre farm in Kentucky in a predominately Amish community for 5 years. My home was a renovated Amish house, and the house was heated solely by two wood burning stoves. Here is a fun story: during the first month or two I lived there Steve had to go to a seminar in California for a week. Now you have to understand that I was raised in places that ranged from small town to large city during my lifetime, so I was a full-fledged City Slicker. So Steve went to CA and I was left behind with farm animals and the previous owner-of-the-farm's dogs. There was one dog in particular that I was afraid of. He wasn't the friendliest dog and looked a bit wild. While Steve was gone, that dog chew on the necks of two chickens. The kids rushed in and told me what had happened and the chickens were bleeding. I did anything that a normal City Slickin' Woman *could* do: I rushed them to our "next door neighbor's house", you know, the one 1/4 mile away! I must have sounded in a panic when I explained what had happened and that I needed him to kill them for me and he could keep the meat, when he answered very quiet and calmly "Are you sure you don't want to keep the meat?" I felt like a raving fool, but figured they'd forget all about me and the incident. FIVE YEARS LATER I was at an Amish School Consignment Auction buying a plateful of bar-b-qued chicken when the lady looked at me and smiled and said, "Aren't you the lady that brought us those chickens a few years back?" ARGH! She remembered!

The next two stories come from when we lived by Steve's parents when we first moved to the South. We lived in a mobile home on the top of a ridge on their 100 Acre Woods in the back-woods of Tennessee.

4) The power company was slow as molasses in January when it came to putting up a power pole for us, so they finally got to it *after* the mobile home had been moved on. When they came, they told us they had forgotten a blasting mat, but they thought it'd be ok. Um, no. They blasted a boulder out of the ground that landed on top of the mobile home roof and put new skylight in my kitchen! It was there that I learned that I *love* roofing houses! It was beautiful, peaceful, and quiet up on the roof, especially with my small children being watched by my mil!

5) I really wanted the carpets cleaned before moving all of our stuff in, but our electricity hadn't been hooked up yet. I called a carpet cleaning company anyway, to ask them if they would be able to clean our carpets...no, we don't really have electricity, but we could use an extension cord from the chicken coop...
We really did use an extension cord from the chicken coop for the electricity that we needed during the first month. We could choose to use a lamp or a fan, but not both at once.

Back in Kentucky:

6) OH! I was shot at once when I was visiting a lady from our church. Ok, it wasn't my car they were shooting at, but the other lady I was going with. We didn't have an address, but just directions for getting there. The lady had told us she lived in the first house on the left on this one back road in Kentucky. So we were driving down the lane and saw a mobile home that looked like it was recently moved onto the land. It didn't look like a place Cindy would live, but she did say the first house. So Midge turned into the driveway. I saw the front porch light go off and on and was followed by a light way out in the field turn off and on and then a KABOOM! from a gun. It was a warning shot, and we high-tailed it out of there. Come to find out, Cindy hadn't taken into account the newly moved on mobile home...she lived in the second house on the left.

7) And here is another similar to the last. Midge and I was going visiting a lady named Angela on a different night. Again, we had directions since street addresses were of no use in the country. She had directions written down, and we were ok until we came to a fork in the road that hadn't been mentioned. Huh. We looked at both of the roads and decided to go up the hill since it looked more traveled on. We drove up the hill and around the bend. There were only two houses up there, so we drove to the closest one, opened the mailbox and looked at the name on the envelope. It didn't match who we were looking for, so I said that we should go to the next house and see if that was it. We couldn't see a mailbox to that one to check, so I said that we should drive on down the lane and ask the people if they knew where Angela lived. As we got closer Midge said that she got a really bad feeling about it and said she thought we should go down the hill and look around again, so we did. We took the other road and found Angela's place just as the sun was setting.

We visited for a bit, then her husband Bill said to be careful on the way home: don't stop or slow down, but just drive like you know where you're going. It is the marijuana harvest and the harvesters are paranoid. They'd rather shoot ya than look at ya, so just be careful.

What?! We told him about the high road that we'd taken and looking in people's mailboxes and almost going to the house down the lane to ask directions. He just shook his head and said it was good that we didn't because they were the biggest offenders and always had marijuana. ARGH!

Good times! Okay, so now you've heard my random/weird stories, here is your turn!

I tag:

1) April at Making Ends Meet
2) Maren AND Carrie at SAHM Sisters
3) Robyn at Robyn's Adventurelog
4) Rebecca at Marvelous Pigs in Satin
5) Kate the Great at Dear Goodness
6) Eternal Sunshine at Eternal Sunshine of an Empty Mind
7) Betty at Keeper of the Skies Wife

Okay, ladies, I'm ready to listen! ;-) Have fun with the Tag. You can be as verbose or consise as you like.