Margarita tagged me, and I'm so glad! I'd been on a posting roll with Skanky Neighbor happenings, but once the U-Haul disappeared, so did my regular updates.

The rules: You must list one fact about yourself for each letter of your middle name. Each fact must begin with that letter. If you don't have a middle name, just use your maiden name. After you've been tagged, you need to update your blog with your middle name and answers. At the end of your post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name.

My middle name is Michelle, and that's a lot of letters/facts, but I'll try.

M - mirthful; I love to laugh. I enjoy hearing funny stories as much as I love to tell funny stories, which is a good thing considering all the absurd things that happen to me. Sure, I have my down days and bad patches, but mostly, I think fun is the best thing to have, and I try to have as much as possible.

I - independent. I take pride in making my own way in the world, to a fault. It's hard for me to accept, much less ask for, help. Thus it has always been; my mother will tell you that as a wee tot, the first complete sentence I uttered was, "Do it SEFF!" (Translation: I can/will do it myself.)

C - catty. I can be a royal beeyatch, I admit it. "Oh, hello, thank you for coming." OMIGOD, girlfriends, do you SEE that dress she has on?!? And at a FUNERAL?!? Streetwalk much? In Crackville? Er, um, but with very rare exceptions, I'm only nasty behind the backs of people to whom I'm also nasty to their faces. Just less edited - after all, "A true friend stabs you in the front," as Mr. Wilde says.

H - hospitable. I love entertaining, making sure that whoever is coming over, I have their favorite snacks/drinks/treats, I love putting out a spread even if it's just a few of us. Lachele once said she loved coming to my house because I always had great food and wine. Back in January, Nancy's husband commented to Alan, "Your wife puts on quite the spread!" I like being the person of whom those sorts of things are said.

E - epicurean. An offshoot of the good food/good wine thing, but also I love to cook, I love to cook fancy dishes, I see a difficult dish as an enjoyable indulgence. I think I wrote a couple of days ago about how Alan and I scoured the liquor stores in our town looking for Madeira wine, which we sought so I could (a) use it to soak some morel mushrooms ($15 the half-ounce) and (b) make a cream sauce for the chicken which went with the morels along with some creme fraiche, which I couldn't find to buy but which Alan can make, having An Impressive Degree in Culinary Arts...so yeah, I'm a fat, drunken glutton - but the important thing is I'm GOOD at it.

L - long-haired. My hair has been kinda long for most of my life (middle of my back, generally), but for my last birthday Alan bought me this Hoopty-Doo hairbrush as one of my presents. This brush is absolute MAGIC, people. It doesn't yank out knots, they just sort of go away, it doesn't break or damage my hair at all, so ever since then it's been getting even longer. The Husband likes the long hair.

L - literary. I love to read more than just about anything. I love Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and Roddy Doyle and Martha Grimes and, oh! only about a million more. "It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it." (I'm feeling very Wilde today.)

E - evil. I'd be remiss in not including 'evil' in the description, considering the number of phone calls and e-mails I get that say nothing besides "You are pure evil." When I'm bored, I prank call my cow-irkers. At random moments I call The Boss and sing horrible songs like "Mandy" so they'll get stuck in his head. One of my finest moments occurred when The Boss was on vacation in the Bahamas and I called him sobbing. Hey, it's important to find your niche in life.

I'm supposed to tag a person for each letter of my middle name, which is 8 folks - Afton, KristyK, Kvitsh, Maria, Nancy, Sandy, Will and #8 is any of the rest of you who want to! (I'd love to read all your answers but I'm not sure if some of you enjoy or are annoyed by memes. For the record, I mostly like them.)