Heidi Hart

I took a break from Booklikes and missed Grim's 10 Things Meme, but here's mine, better late than never. 

1. I've known my wife since kindergarten. We went to summer camp together. Marriage is always work, but when you've known someone since puberty, you can take some comfort in the fact that whatever happens, they've already seen you at your absolute worst. 

2. I have an auditory processing disorder that makes it hard to process what I hear without lip reading and body language; consequently, I hate talking on the phone. It also makes it hard to filter out background noise, so if I go to a crowded restaurant, most of the time I have no idea what the person next to me is saying, but I can tell you every song that has played on the sound system since we sat down. (Needless to say, my wife finds this very annoying.)

3. My sons have 36 half-siblings through their anonymous sperm donor (at last count). We call them "diblings," and we're planning a trip to Chicago this summer to meet a bunch of them. When we first found out how many there were (26 families so far), we were totally freaked out, but with time my connection with the other mamas (we're all mothers -- either single moms by choice or lesbian couples) has quickly become the best parenting resource I have. I'm planning to write a book about the incredible and surprising blessings that connecting with the donor families has brought into our lives.

4. That thing Molly Ringwald does with her lipstick in The Breakfast Club? I can totally do that.

5. I order my favorite pens (Pilot V-ball liquid ink, extra fine, blue) online because I can't find them in stores anymore. I'm also tempted to stockpile incandescent light bulbs, but so far have resisted the urge.

6. I choose lemon over chocolate, every time. 

7. I always keep my mouth shut when people debate whether or not homosexuality is a choice, because for me, it totally was. I know a lot of people are born that way, but I swing both ways pretty happily.

8. I grew up on an island in the middle of Lake Champlain, in between Vermont and New York. You can drive across a causeway to Vermont, but even local people often didn't know that, and I amused myself in high school (on the mainland, less than 20 miles from home) by telling tall tales about how primitive things were on the island -- how we didn't have electricity, how I had to row off the island in summer or skate across the ice in winter. It still amazes me how often people believed me.

9. I value honesty above all things, but if I meet a person I'm unlikely to meet again (a stranger sitting beside me on a plane, for example), I'll usually tell elaborate lies about my life. Partly it's because I like to tell stories (see number 8, supra), and partly it's because it's easier, when someone asks, "What does your husband do?" to tell them about my fictional husband and our fictional marriage than it is to correct their assumption that I'm married to a man. I'm not in the closet at all or embarrassed about my wife or our relationship, and if she's with me or my kids are with me or if I'm with someone I'll see again, I'll correct any misconceptions, but if I'm alone and strangers want to hear about my husband, I'll tell them all about him and our crazy life together. 

10. My two little boys (aged three and not-quite-one) are the bomdiggety. This sounds like they are an afterthought and not the absolute center of my life,  but that's not true. It's just that there aren't words to express how much I love them and how much joy and fullness they bring to my world. Although, full disclosure: whoever invented the phrase "terrible two's" never met a three-year-old, and it's a good thing my oldest is really, really sweet, because there are moments when I'm totally tempted to put him out at the end of the driveway with a "FREE" sign hanging around his neck.