Talkin' Tuesday - Meet Andrea from sacredsuds!

Click here to visit her 'soap with soul' shop!

Here are 9 Fierce Facts about Andrea and one line is completely fictional.  Get involved by guessing which one of the 10 items listed below is the impostor. Put your comments below and Andrea may be around on Twitter so you can poke at her for some hints!  The fictional statement about Andreas will be posted next Tuesday when I feature the next CN Teammie. See below for the false fact about last week's featured teammie, Natalie.

1) Right after my husband and I got married, he had to leave on a research trip for 5 months (he is a biologist).  We were living in Maryland at the time, and to occupy myself while he was away, I registered for the Washington, DC AIDS Ride.  I raised $2000 and trained for several months to ride my bicycle 350 miles, from North Carolina to Washington, DC, in three and a half days.  Pedaling into Washington on the last day of the ride was the single most empowering moment of my life. 

2) In my former life (pre-children), I worked in a population genetics lab in the entomology department at the University of Maryland.  Yup.  I worked with bugs.  And their DNA.

3) I have several categories of favorite books.  Some I read every year or two (Lonesome Dove, Life of Pi, The Shipping News), some I read every 5 to 10 years (Gone with the Wind, various Hemingway novels, The Fionovar Tapestry trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay), and some were so powerful that I couldn't imagine my life without having read them, but I don't think I'll ever be able to read them again (Roots).

4)  I love to swear.

5)  My favorite way to release energy is to go out dancing.  Sadly, since I've become a parent (and need that release the most!) I rarely go out dancing anymore.  So my best release now is to laugh.  Luckily my husband is very funny.

6)  I grew up on the coast of Georgia and I love boiled peanuts, cheese grits, and diving into ocean waves.  Much to my husband's dismay, I also say (and even worse, write) "y'all's" (that's the plural possessive of y'all, in case you were wondering.  It's usually accompanied with the word "all," as in "all y'all's").

7)  The flower for my logo began as a tattoo, designed by my childhood friend for five of us who get together every year for a Girl's Weekend.  The five petals of the flower symbolize the five stages of a woman's life - birth, maidenhood (girlhood freedom), motherhood (not just of children, but of any creative or nurturing endeavors), menopause, and death.  The inset five-pointed star has myriad symbolic meanings, but I think Dan Brown sums it up best in The Da Vinci Code:  "The ratios of line segments in a pentacle all equal PHI, making this symbol the ultimate expression of the Divine Proportion.  For this reason, the five-pointed star has always been the symbol for beauty and perfection associated with the goddess and the sacred feminine."

8)  I speak English, Spanish, and Jive. 

9)  Both of our children, my brother, my sister-in-law, and my best friend (from #7) are all Sagittarius.  I'm thinking I have some karmic lesson to learn from that sign, but I can't figure out what it is.

10)  I hug trees.  I'm totally embarrassed to do it, and I'm always afraid someone is going to see me, but this winter, whenever I'd go out snowshoeing in the woods, the trees would just stand there, with all their strength and stamina and stillness, and I just couldn't help myself.  I'd look around to make sure nobody could see me, and then I'd wrap my arms around a tree and press my heart up against it.  And I'd feel as rooted as the tree, and the pulse of its energy, and this wonderful sense of safety and comfort and all-is-well-with-the-universe.

*******Last week's false fact about Natalie from funretro was this one: #3: I am addicted to raisins and black licorice and carry a stash with me everyday. Actually, Natalie told me that she would rather eat paper than either raising or black licorice.