A is my favorite letter of the alphabet.

This is one of those blog things. I am to tell you ten things about my life having to do with a particular letter. Beth has picked the letter "A" for me. I guess I'm also supposed to ... pass this on? If you want to play, you reply, I tell you what letter and you make one of these in your own blog? It sounds very frightening and interactive.

But here goes.

1. Amy. As most of you probably know by now, my name is Amy. This seems like the most basic place to start, and I'd like to thank Beth for assigning me a letter with a freebie. That's a good friend, folks! Anyway, if you were to ask my father, he would tell you that my name is Amy Grace. And this is what he tends to call me. Neither he nor his sisters were given middle names at birth. What he uses as a middle name, Joseph, was his confirmation name, from my uncle. So in his mind, I don't have a middle name either; Amy Grace is my full first name. I put an official stop to that shortly before I turned four, when I had my first dance class. My father introduced me as Amy Grace, but I told Miss Roseanna that she should just call me Amy. I was also nearly named Amelia, though my mother would still have called me Amy. Amelia was the name of my great-great grandmother.

2. Anita. Anita is my sister, though I never call her Anita. We call each other Bud, which we vaguely understand may be odd to people who don't know us. I'm told this is an Irish thing, to have the nickname Bud, though it's really a nickname for a boy. My grandfather was Bud. My sister turned 15 ten days after I was born. Both my parents worked, and my sister was pretty much my primary caregiver when I was a small child. She changed me and doted on me and is probably the reason I'm so darn smart. I love her more than just about anything. However, she constantly (constantly!) reminds me about how she changed me and doted on me and is probably the reason I'm so darn smart. And that can get very annoying.

3. A boyfriend. Heeeeeeeee!!!! I could just leave this here, as it's perhaps more descriptive than anything I could say. I normally don't get publically gushy about my relationship. That's for us. But it's positively alarming how much I love and care for this person.

4. Acting. I almost wrote "art." This is probably the topic about which I could write the most, and about which I could probably never fully explain how I feel. Ever since I can first remember, there are only two things that I ever wanted to be in life: an "actress", or an "artist". I fervently hope that one day I might be both. It's a hard answer to give, though, and not just because it's a tough path to pursue. In the past, my answer was always tempered by the fact that I was young and I accomplished a lot in school. I don't have that anymore. I'm not used to people assuming that I'm stupid, but when it's widely known that you're trying to break into acting, that's what people assume. My mother told me that my chosen course is beneath me. I don't know how to respond, because I always felt like I was aspiring to something higher.

5. Ambidexterity. It's a thing that I have. Though according to the internet, I am not truly ambidextrous. And if I am, it's a sign that I have brain damage. What! I in fact am "cross-dominant" or something like that. The deal is, I do not have a specific hand/side/brain lobe that I favor over the other. I do not do all tasks equally well with both hands. One is usually more fine tuned than the other. I used to be able to write equally well with both. In second grade, in Catholic School, I was told that I would never achieve satisfactory penmanship unless I focused my writing energy on only one hand. Therefore, I would receive Cs in Penmanship until I picked a hand. ... And I had to pick the right. This is why, 90% of the time, I am to be seen writing with my right hand. My left hand is out of practice, but it still knows what it's doing. Here's something that fascinates me: I can write with my left with equal speed and clarity to my right, as long as I don't realize that I'm using my left hand. I have had many instances where I have been writing something with my left hand, and the thought occured to me: "Oh! I'm using my left hand!" and then my writing immediately deteriorates. It's one of my goals in life to rebuild my writing ability in my left hand.

6. Aldactone. This is the latest prescription drug that I have added to my daily regimine. This brings my total to five, though I take seven individual pills a day. It's actually a blood pressure medicine, but I take it to combat my excessive swarthiness due to the high levels of testosterone that my cystic ovaries produce. Whoo boy am I somatically fucked up! This is the first medication in a while that I've taken for what is, largely, a cosmetic issue. But it's important enough to me to suffer through the past few weeks of side effects while my body adapts to it. (These side effects include dips in my already low blood pressure and dizziness.) I have also taken other medications that start with A, including: Alesse, Atenolol, Allegra, and good old Advil.

7. Apple trees. I like apples. And since I was a small child I have been fascinated with the idea of having my very own apple tree. Or any fruit-bearing plant, but mostly apple. I have tried many times with little success to grow apple plants from seeds. Of course, these experiments were never monitored by someone who knew what she was doing (i.e. my mom) so I usually wound up drowning them. Turns out you shouldn't water plants every day. Who knew! I'm currently in the middle of my latest and most earnest attempt. I have five seedlings in a numbered row sitting on my sun porch. They are each about five inches tall. I also have a "cutting" that I kinda sorta stole from a tree at the Home Depot that I am trying to root in some soil. That's not going so swell. Anyway, not only do trees take a long time to grow, but apples are particularly fussy, and they require two separate individuals in order to produce fruit. My yard doesn't have the room for one apple tree, let alone two, but that's okay. I imagine that if my attempts are successful that I will carry my fledging trees around with me wherever I move, and I will plant them when I find the place I want to be my home.

8. Allie. Allie was my German Shepard. Because we didn't have enough people with "A" names already, we had to give them to our pets as well. Allie (her given name was Alexis) was bred to be a show dog in Mississippi. My sister got her when she was living in West Milford with some of the money she was awarded after being in a horrible car accident. Then she moved back home, and Allie moved with her. After a life of nothing but cats, we had to adjust to living with an ENORMOUS canine. She was 105 pounds, solidly fit. Despite being a cat person through and through, I loved Allie very much. I used to sit on the floor and hand feed her Kibbles 'N' Bits. She especially liked the cheese pieces. My perception of animals is sometimes unfortunately skewed. My neighbor had a Dalmatian named Ted who lived to be 17 years old. This meant that even though I knew intellectually that he was an exception, I was still shocked and confused when Allie developed a brain tumor at the age of ten. Allie is also the reason that most "big dogs" don't impress me very much. Eh. He's not that big. When you're eight years old and a dog stands on her back legs and you stare up at her towering over you, you're forever spoiled for size. Allie was an awesome dog. My sister wants to get another German Shepard. She says she'll know her when she sees her. I am fully in favor of this.

9. Annie. Not the girl. The movie, starring Aileen Quinn, Carol Burnett, and Albert Finney. Annie was my very first hardcore obsession. By the time I hit kindergarten I knew it word for word and sang the songs daily. Which of course did not deter me from also watching it daily. I directed my friends so that we would put on mini Annie-plays during the day. While it doesn't have the same cultural fluency as the Simpsons or Buffy, it was the precursor to all those entertainment loves. It set the tone and the pattern and also my love for redheaded heroines (others including Anne Shirley, Pippilotta Longstocking, and Strawberry Shortcake). This is probably the reason that there's still a part of me that desperately wants to be a redhead. Mr. Warbucks prefers redheaded children.

10. Accord. I drive a white 1995 Honda Accord. It's the car of choice for young and useless people. I don't really like it, and I wasn't thrilled to get it. Of course, I don't really like driving, so that could be a big part of it. And also the major headaches that were going on in my life around the time that I acquired it. I named my car Nerwin, because it was the very first name that came to me. I don't know what that means. Nerwin and I have a fairly neutral relationship. She gets me between points in efficient time and I've yet to die or be seriously injured. Right now Nerwin needs some gas and a trip to the car wash.