Okay!  I'm it!  I've been tagged by Diane to participate in this, my first meme since I started blogging again. 

What is a meme?  Given ten minutes of internet research and my limited capacity to retain scientific terminology, here's what I've gleaned:  The term was first used by ethologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene to describe a kind of cultural gene; a mental virus if you will, which propagates and permeates and evolves our culture through a process of behavioral natural selection.

That's as far as I got before my eyes started to cross. 

For our purposes, we'll define it as a blog-based chain letter.

This particular meme calls for links to my 5 favorite personal blog posts according to the following rules:

Link 1 must be about family.  Easy.  Since my early blog was primarily family related humor, I picked one of my favorite stories.

Link 2 must be about friends.  I haven't written much about friends, but this got a laugh out of its subject, my friend Kim.

Link 3 must be about yourself.  Well, it's all about me, right?

Link 4 must be about something you love.  I love writing and this is short-short was inspired by an interruption during my writing time.

Link 5 can be anything you choose.  This is a short story length fiction piece based on a real story and was a cathartic exercise for me.  I've not tried to have it published, but many people have emailed me to say that they could relate.

Now, who to tag?  See, this is exactly why I never volunteer to be a Pampered Chef  hostess, either, because I just don't know who to ask. 

I'll get back to you on who to tag.  Maybe I'll tag 20 random blogging strangers.

Here are two fun words to add to your vacab cache:

groodles

pronunciation:  grood-uhlz (or, like oodles and noodles)

definition:  According to my trusty Balderdash cards, it means leftover food.  However, I've not been able to confirm that definition through any but the "urban" dictionary, so I guess it qualifies as slang.  I did find that there is a designer breed of dog called groodle which is a cross between a golden retriever and a poodle.  There is also the spoodle and the labradoodle, if you're into designer dogs.  I've always called a cross-bred dog a "mutt;"  now, I feel like I should feed our own dog, Pumpkin, premium food. 

For our purposes, let's go with groodles as leftovers.

Which brings me to my next word: 

ramfeezled

pronunciation:  ram-feez-uld

definition:  exhausted

I think these two words go perfectly together:

"What's for dinner, Mom?"
"Groodles."
"Groodles?"
"Yes, groodles, I'm ramfeezled."