5 ACROSS.

Am I the only one confessing their love of crossword puzzles? It's possible I was left with no choice in the matter, but nevertheless, I have a...thing; now let me explain. My late Mimi was a crossword puzzle aficionado. This coming January will be 12 years since her passing; and prior to that, she spent much of my childhood battling Alzheimers. Thus, memories of her are few but precious. And one of those beloved memories is of her working crossword puzzles at the kitchen table. I always thought it was an old person's pastime (read: boring) and who even knows what those clues mean. I'm still unsure of their meaning (at least) 85% of the time, much to my Mother's dismay. You see, the crossword bug hit her, too, but she's been doing them a lot longer than me and she's just annoyingly good at those wordy kinds of things. Memories of high school paper proofreading. So you see, it's part of my heritage. Some people sew, others Polka, we do crosswords. Mom has more recently started copying puzzles from the newspaper and stockpiling them for me. It's a stack of awesomeness with lots of little squares awaiting my pen. And the best part, if I'm being honest, is that they're usually in sequential order which allows me to "check my work." My crossword puzzling skills are much improved, but I have much ground to gain as my legacies are much to live up to- in more ways than one.