Premio Dardos!

The lovely and wonderful Gillian Marchenko at Pocket Lint and Expecting Evangeline has bestowed We All Fall Down with a Premio Dardos Award! Thank you, thank you!

“Premio Dardos" means "prize darts" in Italian. The Premier Dardos Award is given for "recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. The award was created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers and showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web."

Acceptance carries these stipulations:

Step 1. Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog.

Step 2. Pass the award to another five blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgement, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award.

Step 3. Answer the following questions on your own blog, replacing one question that you dislike with a question of your own invention, and adding one more question of your own.

1) What are you wearing right now? Lime and blue crinkly cardigan, khaki crinkly long skirt, grey leggings

2) What is your biggest fear? Can't go there. Read my last Chicago Moms Blog post and you'll see I can take fears a little too far.

3) Do you nap a lot? Not as much as I'd like. Today, for 20 minutes before our dr. appointment, parked, with four year old doing the same in the back seat.

4) Who is the last person you hugged? Six year old Mia because she cleaned up the playroom.

5) What websites to you visit when you go online? Chicago Moms Blog and the writers' personal blogs, LOL cats, Catherine Newman on Tuesdays when she posts a new recipe, Sexy People (it's not what you think), Cake Wrecks

6) What was the last item you bought? Omoxycillin prescription for my strep throat, new toothbrushes for the girls.

7) What are you reading? John Updike's Couples. Recommended by Carrie Kirby. I was bored by the wife-swapping, but thrilled by the luminous prose:

...He had grown to love this house, its rectangular low rooms, its baseboards and chair rails molded and beaded by hand, the slender mullions of the windows whose older panes were flecked with oblong bubbles and tinged with lavender, the swept worn brick of the fireplace hearths like entryways into a sooty upward core of time... He loved how this house welcomed into itself in every season lemony flecked rhomboids of sun whose slow sliding revolved it with the day like the cabin of a ship on a curving course.

8) If you could go to the Oscars, who would you want to sit next to? A chatty man nominated for best costume design who had previously won and was up against a sure-fire winner so he was totally relaxed about the whole thing and only wanted to make catty and cooing comments about the stars' outfits.

9) Has a celebrity’s hair cut ever influenced your own hairstyle? Jean Seburg's boy cut in Breathless. Loved having short short hair with all its emphasis on the eyes, hated the awkward growing out period.

10) What is one skill you wish you had, but don’t: Ice skating?

11) What was the last movie you watched? Space Chimps. For the fifth time. I'm a stay at home mom. I have no life.

12) What is the luckiest thing that ever happened to you? My husband's father had a temporary ministry in Kansas at the same time Randy and his long-term girlfriend broke up. Randy was merely a cute co-worker I had a major crush on at the time, but since he was driving from Chicago to Kansas to visit his father over Easter, I had a golden opportunity to share a ride. Sparks, love, eventually children ensued.

13) If you had a whole day to yourself; no work, commitments or interruptions what would you do? I would sleep late - but only 8:30 or so cause I don't want to squander a precious minute of free time. Oatmeal breakfast with nuts and dried apricots that magically appears on the immaculate table. Read the Op/Ed page and the comics in the Trib. Go for a vigorous walk to the lake. Come home to shower and early lunch (I know, I just ate. But I took a long time exfoliating and my blood sugar gets all wacky when I work out.) Avocado, tomato and cream cheese sandwich on whole wheat. Write until the late afternoon. Twitter, Facebook and AOL have all gone fishing so I have no distractions and produce pages of cogent and beautiful prose. Change my clothes into something fabulous. Effortless public transportation to meet friends at bar for drinks, play/movie/concert/art opening, Dear Husband meets us for dinner and drives me, pleasantly tipsy, home to sneak a peek at my sleeping angels and bed.

14) Is there a major goal you have that you haven’t yet achieved? To publish my book.

15) Where did you meet your spouse? At work. For me, it was like at first sight, for him, I had to do some flirting.

16) What is something that those in blogland might not know about you? I'm short-waisted?

17) What states and countries have you visited as an adult? States: California, Colorado, DC, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Texas, Arizona, New Hampshire, Florida, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, drive-bys: Chicago to Florida by way of the Natchez Trace, Florida to New York off the interstates, New York to Chicago. Countries: England, Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, France, Monaco, Italy, Russia, the Ukraine, Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Bahamas, Mexico, Canada.

18) What do you do to relieve stress? Curse, hug my daughters, read, write, blog, go for walks, watch good TV, date night with my husband.

19) If you could change one physical trait about you what would it be? Give me the cardio-vascular system of a marathoner.

20) In what room in history would you have liked to be a fly on the wall? I love hearing how other people answer this question, so I added it, but I don't have a very exciting answer. Independence Hall, during the machinations, negotiations and speeches before the Declaration was signed?

I’m passing this award on to:

Susan at Two Kinds of People
Anne at Sippy Cup Nation
Sue at Close to the Sun
Rachel at Be Love Now
Lisa Romeo
Sally at Queen of the Playground