<p>Shivers! First Momsdream’s story, now yours, Woodwork. Amazing. Those are hooks, lines and sinkers!</p>
<p>Thanks for the chuckle, tsdad and greybeard. :)</p>
<p>"This is very wierd, but is it a “hook?”</p>
<p>Based on your mystic connectedness, I suspect you should know better than us mortals. :)</p>
<p>Heidi,</p>
<p>A combination of a college girlfriend who was a native speaker, three years of college Chinese, a year in Taiwan, several years of working in Chinatown, and lately, four business trips a year.</p>
<p>I raised two children (natural childbirth, since that seems to be worth noting here) who are complete opposites in every way I can think of, but they both seem to have come out ok.</p>
<p>I’ve had enough poems published to be listed as a poet in Poets and Writers.</p>
<p>My children have cousins who are Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, white, African American, and Korean American. (The Korean American ones are also Jewish).</p>
<p>I also ate at the French Laundry and didn’t like it. </p>
<p>We have spent at least 20 years of our married life driving cars with cracked windshields.</p>
<p>I am left handed, but my right eye is dominant.</p>
<p>My father marched in Selma.</p>
<p>SCUBA Instructor, underwater photographer, antique tool collector and subject matter expert for Wood magazine, woodworker and timber framer, beekeeper, great kid…</p>
<p>Dad, don’t forget that you’re a gardener, a supportive father, and you, without fail, get mistaken for Santa Claus by little kids at least a few times each year.</p>
<p>Ok, I see that this is becoming more competitive! 20 years of cracked windshields, sac? antique tool collector, bandit? Greybeard and his Chinese? Digi being psychic? (I can’t page back, but I know I saw other cool hooks!)</p>
<p>How about this:
In my garage, stored in an airtight container (not sure that this container is called, it’s like a barrel) I have my late grandfather’s WWI uniform, coat, pajamas, helmet and gas mask - complete with cartridges - all in perfect condition. I also have all of the letters he wrote home - a whole box of them. </p>
<p>I also had my grandmother’s German dolls from childhood, which I found in a box burried deep in her basement after her death. My aunt decided that she wanted to “repair” them and wound up selling them to a collector. They were Handwerk and Kestner dolls. I wish I still had them. They were in good condition, but needed wigs. Some people will sell anything! UGH. Only my dad knows I have the uniform, and he won’t tell anyone 
I’ve learned my lesson.</p>
<p>Momsdream talking about her conception, a great and powerful story, made me think of my real hook. 
I was born in a car (no, not conceived in a car) in NYC on an Easter Sunday. It was also April Fool’s Day! My mother went to the hospital from Brooklyn to Manhattan earlier in the day, TOLD those dumb OB guys that she was in labor, but they sent her back to Brooklyn via my father’s car. Well, she was bound and determined not to be told her labor was another April Fools joke, so she waited a little too long to tell Dad they had to get back to the hospital in Manhattan. They drove like maniacs all the way to the city. The way my Dad tells it he went running up the hospital steps yelling “My wife’s having a baby, my wife’s having a baby” and the folks congratulated him "Way to go, buddy . . " and he said “NO, right here, right now,in the CAR!” So, a doc came, I was already born, already in a hurry to start living, they put me in an incubator to make sure I wasn’t contaminated by my Dad’s car (a major insult to HIM, who is fanatical about his car and was a little done in by what all arrived with me in his car . … sorry,) And I’ve loved the road and anything with wheels ever since!</p>
<p>Oh yes, my birthday is DDay for college admissions. Wish me a good one!</p>
<p>Momofthree, that’s a great birth story!! Was your mom alone when you were born?</p>
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<p>Thanks, kid. Now I feel old…</p>
<p>Momsdream, I think that she might as well have been as unschooled in birthing babies as my dad was! I do recall he said she was having me while he was trying to get a doctor to come help. I was a second child, and I know my son (kid #2) came within 50 minutes of real labor. So, chances are good she was alone. (Except for all those angels that look after moms in childbirth. )</p>
<p>:) momof three. Thanks for the laugh.</p>
<p>digmedia - I hate to break the news to you, but “mystic connectedness” is the same thing as ESP (extra-sensory perception). It does not mean you’re weird. Several of us have “psychic” tendencies (or had them in the past). Welcome to the club! ha
Tabbyzmom</p>
<p>Tabbyzmom,</p>
<p>I knew you were going to say that.</p>
<p>Momsdream, what an awesome story.</p>
<p>Okay, well, I’ve refrained but I’m in a relaxed mood today, having gotten a favorable ruling today on a case that has preoccupied me for two months…
I have to smile thinking back to how I misinterpreted the early comments on this thread about having “babies without drugs”–to show you my hook, since people are apparently into various aspects of the reproductive process as a major hook–I thought she meant could CONCEIVE babies without drugs!!!</p>
<p>As for me, I had seven operations before being able to conceive my wonderful and miraculous first son, including one a week before Christmas in 1985, when he was already safely a couple of weeks in utero, but due to some left-side pain we thought it was yet another tubal pregnancy, and I awoke from anesthesia to hear the doctor say that everything looked fine, it was not a tubal pregnancy, and it looked like we were going to have a wonderful Christmas. Three and a half years, MANY drugs, and several more surgeries later, we gave birth to in vitro twins–my husband saw them when they were 4 cells big, in a Petri dish (and said they looked very cute). During both pregnancies I had 3 months of bedrest and several anti-preterm-labor drugs. And yes, not to change my pattern, drugs with birth as well, as all of the babies were breech and delivered by C-section.</p>
<p>Sometimes I forget what miracles I have experienced–but all with drugs. I bow gratefully before the wonders of modern medicine.</p>
<p>I also have an athletic hook. Have medaled at the national level in masters’ swimming events, and regularly medal in local road races as well, plus completed a half-marathon two years ago, at age 50. The age category in which I compete is “Young Dinosaur” (50-59).</p>
<p>I discovered America, invented the bikini, wrote Shakespeare, and Matt Damon is my stunt double.</p>
<p>Loyal fan of SG-1, recycler, bus rider, and I wait for sales before I buy anything. I also drink orange juice with extra calcium</p>
<p>digmedia and others with psychic powers: read the book “Innumeracy,” in which the author discusses how coincidence is often mistaken for fate and how we try to derive meaning from events due to pure chance. It’s a fascinating book about math, statistics and probability.</p>
<p>Observer of the human condition, vote in all presidential elections, and I don’t litter. I also show up on time.</p>
<p>It’s a fascinating book about math, statistics and probability.</p>
<p>Oh c’mon…aren’t psychic ability and fate more interesting? Some would argue that numbers are used to satisfy the needs of logical people who have no faith in the universe.</p>