Monday Meme Madness

I've been tagged for two different memes recently. I'm busy working this week and don't have much time for blogging so I figured this would be a good time to fall back on a meme instead.

Grace from Sandier Pastures wants to know 8 facts about my mother:

1. My mother went away to college after 10th grade. She skipped 11th and 12th grades because her small town high school didn't have that much to offer.

2. She's missing the lower joint on both of her thumbs and didn't know that was abnormal until she got to college, where she thought her roommate was double-jointed.

3. Because of that she can't snap.

4. She loves music but her own musical talent is limited to playing the "squeaky magic marker".

5. She looks a lot younger than she is. (Unfortunately, I didn't inherit that particular characteristic. I got her hips instead.)

6. She made my sister and I great birthday cakes when we were growing up and my desire to give my own children those same kinds of fun memories is the reason I got so into birthday cakes for my own kids. Of course my mother now claims that she never worked as hard as I do, that I've embellished my memories.

7. My mother put up with a LOT of crap from me during my teenage years and still never faltered in her love and support.

8. Today my mom is one of my best friends. She (and my dad) are coming for a visit in a few weeks and I can't wait!

Shelly over at This Eclectic Life also tagged me, this time for the middle name meme:

1. You have to post these rules before you give the facts.

2. Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of their middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.

3. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog-post containing your own middle name game facts.

4. At the end of your blog-post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

5. Don’t forget to link back to the person that tagged you in the beginning

Thankfully I have a short middle name. I hated it growing up because it was too different (and because one mean little girl called me "heinie" to make fun of it) but today I'm grateful for my parents' choice. My middle is Hani, which is Hungarian for Hannah and which was my great-grandmother's name. My grandmother's entire family was wiped out in the Holocaust, so it's a great honor to be able to carry a small piece of it forward.

H - heart. I'd like to think that I've got a lot of heart.
A - animated. I'm always talking or gesturing. I find it nearly impossible to not fidget.
N - night owl. Yup, that's me.
I - independent. I do like to go my own way, whether it's fashion, music, choice of career, whatever. I like to do what works for me, not what's trendy.

There, done, time to get back to work. Whoever would like to do one of these, consider yourselves tagged and have fun with it.