Getting to know me...

Ok, since everyone in the D-Mom-blogosphere is revealing themselves and getting to know each other, I thought I would join the party. Never one to not join a party I am! 

Here are 10 random things about me... 

1. Penny is my real name. Not Penelope. If you knew my last name you would laugh too. My parents are funny and made my name read like a sentence. Joke’s on me. My. Whole. Life. Oh and yes, I HAVE heard every penny-coin joke there is. Honest.

2. I collect snowdomes. You know, you buy them at airports and tourist locations, the ones you shake and it snows inside the dome. Have about 300. I collect the cheap, plastic, snowing-in-Hawaii kind. The real lame ones. Yep. Someone’s gotta collect them and that would be me. My favorites are my 5 NYC ones that show the WTC. 

3. I am always barefoot. I mean always. I really, really, really don’t like shoes or socks of any kind. And not surprisingly, the bottoms of my feet feel and look like real leather! Honest, I could walk on coals and not even feel it. 

4. There are two places in this world that make my heart skip a beat when I see them, each time. One is Philadelphia. I was born and raised here and I love the city. When I round the bend on I-95 on my way home from somewhere and I see the city’s outline, my heart swells. My other place is Ocean City, NJ. Every time I cross the 9th Street bridge into OC I almost want to cry. It’s where I spent my childhood summers. Everything about the place warms my heart. I still go there, every summer.

5. My best friend Wendy passed away in 2001. She died on her birthday. I mean, who dies on their birthday, right?! It broke my heart in two. I miss her every day and think of her. I keep a little shelf in my living room with a Nativity set on it that she made me. I dearly miss her presence in my life.

6. My parents have been married for 60 years. You should have seen the look my mom gave my dad when they celebrated. She looked over at him and said ‘It’s been quite a ride, hasn’t it?’

7. I have two tattoos. One is a flower on my back and the other is a group of shooting stars on my ankle. I dearly love tattoos. I would tattoo my whole body if I could. I may just do it some day. That bring said, you should also know that I love Harley Davidson motorcycles, loud punk alternative music, don’t even drink and was raised in a very normal family :0)

8. I am fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and have taught Deaf children for over 20 years. I have a bachelors degree in Deaf Education and a Masters as a Reading Specialist. 

9. I met my husband in junior high school. He was my first boyfriend. We have known each other for 33 years, but only married for 15. 

10. I believe in karma, endurance, courage, having faith, keeping in real, getting on with it, living this one life cause it’s not a dress rehearsal, having fun, resilience and that both Type 1 diabetes and autism have entered my life to teach me lessons that I could not have learned anywhere else.