What’s better than your run-of-the-mill, everyday WordPress blogging award?  AN AWARD WITH DRAGONS.

I wanna be a dragon.  You can fly.  You can cook your food by breathing on it.  AND YOU CAN FRY MORONS BY BELCHING ON THEM. I mean WHAT is a better response to being served a heaping serving of steaming asserole than to insta-char the jerk into a silent block of carbon?  *POOF* and YOU’RE a briquette….<mic drop>

(Side note:  I actually wrote about how charcoal briquettes came to be once.  Never accuse me of not having diverse interests.)

A hearty thank you to Chelise at Caterpillar to Butterfly for the nomination!  (Chelise writes about codependency recovery – she’s a good read – plus her name is like the BEST. DRAGON. NAME. EVER.  Right?)

THE RULES:

• DISPLAY THE AWARD CERTIFICATE ON YOUR WEBSITE
• ANNOUNCE YOUR WIN WITH A POST AND LINK TO WHOEVER PRESENTED YOUR AWARD
• PRESENT 15 AWARDS TO DESERVING BLOGGERS
• DROP THEM A COMMENT TO TIP THEM OFF AFTER YOU’VE LINKED THEM IN THE POST
• POST 7 INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF.

The rules, the way I’m doing them, because NO ONE TELLS A DRAGON WHAT TO DO:

THE RULES (Dragon Kate-style <roar>):

• DISPLAY THE AWARD CERTIFICATE ON YOUR WEBSITE (I’m good with this one.  Copy, Insert, CHECK.)
  
• ANNOUNCE YOUR WIN WITH A POST AND LINK TO WHOEVER PRESENTED YOUR AWARD (That makes sense. No reason to be all ninja about it, right?  Although a ninja/dragon battle would be super rad.)
• PRESENT 15 AWARDS TO DESERVING BLOGGERS (Uh…do I even KNOW 15 people?  Maybe I’ll divide that by, like, three.  Because three’s a crowd, and when you have three people, you ALWAYS end up with two against one.  Thus, three ALWAYS divides, so I come up with five.  Because math.  It’s legit.  Common Core says so.  It’s explained at a simple fourth-grade level here.)
  
• DROP THEM A COMMENT TO TIP THEM OFF AFTER YOU’VE LINKED THEM IN THE POST (That feels like cheating.  Like making the Easter eggs beep and buzz so you find them before they self-ferment into noxious holiday grenades.  If they deserve the award, they’ll find themselves mentioned here.)
  
• POST 7 INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF.  (Um.  Well.  The odds are better that you’ll find seven more interesting things on a pack of gum, or in a toddler’s diaper.  (Hey, my kid ate crayons.)  But I’ll try.)
  

So here are my 15/3 nominees:

fattymccupcakes, because she is freaking hilarious, and because she told me the other day that I AM HER NEW FAVORITE.  You may commence the weeping and gnashing of teeth now.

luvbearlvx, because he actually DOES cry, plus he claims I need to up my snark game.  <thunk> GAUNTLET DOWN, BRO.

The Persistent Platypus, because she went on a diet this week and diets suck, so maybe dragons will cheer her up.

Walking After Midnight, because we are coffee soul sisters #teamDunkin

Remember the Good Stuff, because she writes a lot of feel-good warm fuzzy things that are always a pleasure to read.

And now, since I know you’re all just dying on the vine waiting for my seven fascinating personal factoids that will enrich your life and resolve global warming:

1.  My all-time favorite letter?  Q.  Q and I have a lot in common.  Loving Q means you’re never lonely, because Q is always with U!

<insert three-hour time delay while Kate pleads guilty at Bad Pun Prison>

Q is HIGHLY underutilized.  When I’m trying to mess with someone’s typing, it’s easy to approach from the side and sneak in a few random Qs when they’re typing.

Q Q Q qq QQ

See?  Immediate hilarity.  YAY Q

2.  I collect frogs.  In addition to having them all over my office, I have one on my laptop:

one on my car:

(Shout out to Vinyl Disorder for the decals.  They rock.  Clearly.)

And one on ME! (I’ll let you guess where.  NO, it’s NOT on my butt, you sicko.)

I love the tropical poison dart frogs.  Cute, but deadly.  I can relate to that.  And then there’s the acronym that can be a soothing reminder to the scathing voices in my head:

• Fully
• Rely
• On
• God

We could all use more frogs.  PLUS THEY EAT BUGS.  Bugs suck.  More frogs = fewer bugs.  Winning!

3.  My fingers are double-jointed.  I can bend the tops without bending the middle joint….

FREAAAKKKKYYYY

And so is my thumb.  The top of my thumb bends back 90 degrees.

It also “clicks” when I bend it back to a normal position.  Over and over and over again.  It’s super fun when you have people around you who hate, with the fire of a thousand suns, the sound of knuckles cracking.  <click click click> They cringe, cower, and eventually cover their ears and hide under the table, curled up in the fetal position shuddering and weeping silently.

Heh.  <click click click>

4.  I can’t pronounce the work “coagulate.” When I say it, it sounds like “co laj a gate”.  It’s a sickness.  I can’t fix it.  I don’t even try any more. 

5. I have two birthmarks.   One is a strawberry hemangioma on my upper right arm. I was quite self-conscious about it when I was a kid – I mean, it looked like a moose had randomly given me a huge hickey.

The good news is that the doctors have reassured my parents that it will TOTALLY go away by the time I’m twelve or so.  (Seeing as how I’ve turned twelve three times, and am edging uncomfortably close to Twelve Number Four….I’m less optimistic.)  

The other is a flat, brown mole on my left ring finger.  If there’s a dermatologist in the room, it usually catches her eye, because apparently, it looks a lot like cancer.  But it’s been there all my life.

When I was a kid, I fondly called it my chocolate mark – I told people that was born with the label that, like, REQUIRED me to eat chocolate ALL DAY LONG.  (This had the effect of distracting them from the moose hickey, which, while interesting, will never be chocolate.)

6.  I am allergic to cockroaches.  This seems to be pretty unusual, given the odd looks I get when this comes up in conversation.  Which happens more often than you’d think. 

How did I discover this?  In college, I got a summer job cleaning dorm rooms.  (High glam here, folks.)  I started breaking out in horrifically disfiguring hives periodically.  It’s a unique look that the world wasn’t quite ready for – understand this was 30 years before Lady Gaga, and we’re not quite ready for her, either.  Think having your entire lip swell up is chic gorgeous?  Try HALF YOUR LIP.  Stunning.

So off I went to the allergist, where they performed a scratch test.  Essentially, they draw a grid on your back, and put a drop of allergen in each box.  Then all the allergists come over and play Hive Reaction Bingo: They randomly select different allergens, and when the square is called, they take a needle <shudder> and just barely scratch your skin so the drop seeps in and the aforementioned allergen infects you.  Whoever’s square flares up the most wins a prize – probably a tongue depressor and a lollipop.  And, of course, bragging rights. Obvs.

So it turns out I’m allergic to dust mites, birch trees, and cockroaches.  It’s quite the icebreaker.

7.  I’m deathly afraid of canned biscuits. 

BECAUSE THEY EXPLODE.  You gently tap them on the counter, and JUST when you’re starting to feel the beat, BOOM!  Biscuit blams out of the container and scares the ever-loving shiz out of you, causing you to scream like an evil clown with an ax just popped out from the broom closet.  Out of sheer terror, you drop the can and it crashes to the floor, taking with it your ruined dreams of dinner and world peace.

I don’t eat canned biscuits anymore.  (Because gluten, and because chemicals.  Delicious, toasty chemicals.)  But, when I used to, there was only one way I could possibly get the dough out of the can:

1. Gently, slowly peel label back JUST A LITTLE BIT.  Gently.  Slowly.  STOP when you start to see brown paper.
2. Hold can in right hand.  Stand next to countertop, minion, little brother’s head, or other hard surface.
3. Use left finger to plug left ear.  Shrug right shoulder up to plug right ear.
4. Squinch eyes shut as tightly as you can.
5. Begin chant of “LALALALALALALA” to cancel out surrounding biscuit explosion noise.
6. While chanting and holding position above, whack can firmly on counter 3-4 times.
7. STOP.  Peek cautiously out of one eye. If can is open, relax and access biscuits.  If can is still intact, IMMEDIATELY return to Step 1.  Repeat steps 1-6 until you see biscuits.

So there you have it – the seven most interesting things about Kate.

Dragon-approved.

Really.  Go ask one.

And bring marshmallows, just in case she doesn’t feel like chatting.