Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Who Am I?

My friend, JoyZeeBoy, found this interesting site called Type Analyzer, which will analyze your blog and tell you what kind of a blogger you are. I put in the URL of my mirror blog on Blogspot and this is what it gave me:

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I was pretty amazed to read that. I decided if they'd thrown in a potted palm for me to hide behind because of being so shy in public, they'd have nailed it exactly. (They even got a remarkably life-like caricature of me, did ya notice?)

Now how can they do that in a split second? And can't be just random because if you read JZB's entry, they pretty much nailed him too and his is totally different from mine.

Yes, I'm attuned to pleasure, beauty and like to fill my surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors, and sweet smells.

Of course, what I get these days is fabric softener softened towels, and the sweet smell of puppy urine. But I recently went out and bought some better than run of the mill air fresheners so now that faint smell of urine now has a hint of tropical rainforest about it. I probably won't try to market it as my signature scent (even if it is!)

Anybody who has ever lived here in this house during holiday time can nod enthusiastically about the "don't like to plan ahead part." Anybody who has had to suffer through "Mom's Annual Christmas Crisis" (which includes all of my children and some of my in-laws) knows how well I plan ahead for big events. However, if I am exhausting myself, it's usually from doing something like sitting up at the computer at 1 a.m. writing a journal entry that won't be posted for 24 hrs.

(what? what? who me?)

And anybody who has read this journal for any length of time can agree with "enjoy work that makes them able to help other people," having watched me go through a series of bleeding heart liberal activities, from driving HIV clients to working in a homeless shelter, to all the marriage equality stuff, to the foster puppies.

"They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation." Who ME? Peggy was always encouraging me not to "suffer in silence," but to speak up when something upset me. I keep trying to tell her how very bad my history with speaking out is.

I was a teen ager before I spoke out for the first time, in defense of my mother in an argument with my father--and it resulted in an entire month of silence.

The next time was when the kids were little and my parents had moved into a home with a pool. It was their first time in the pool and my father became livid because one of the inquisitive boys lifted up the cover to the pool thermometer. He ranted and raved about how he had bought this beautiful house and gave the kids this great pool and all they wanted to do was break his thermometer. He stormed out of the house and I ran after him and tried, in vain, to try to get him to understand that the kids were little and inquisitive and that he had never told them to leave the cover alone and that if he had instructed them in what they were supposed to do, and THEN they did it anyway, he would be justified in getting angry.

Well, that went over like a lead balloon. It was a very quiet family meal we had that night and I was very glad when we left.

And then there was the infamous last time when he went against my request not to take it upon himself to talk with Paul about sex, as Paul went off to college. That little bit of "standing up for myself" resulted in his trying to write me out of his will...and then dying before things were ever resolved. The ultimate "silence."

So I try to avoid confrontation like the plague. The very idea does funny things to my stomach. I can count on the fingers of half of one hand the times when I've actually done it and had a positive result.

It's amazing to me that a web site could come up with such an accurate personality assessment ... or maybe it was just a lucky coincidence. Nonetheless, it was pretty much right on.

Except for the potted palm.

(And if there is some trick to all this, I don't want to know; I prefer to believe in serendipity.)

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