Sunday, March 12, 2006

Five Weird Things About Me

Wow, a rare Sunday morning post! I skipped church this morning, which allowed me a little time to write . . . I'm so glad to have this quiet time, and I desparately needed it, but the theological implications are a bit unsettling . . .

Virginia Gal dinged me on this meme, so here goes . . .

Only five? Dear me . . . I’m sure many of my friends can think of many more than that . . .

(1) I won’t eat anything left in the refrigerator more than 24 hours and I have the tendency to always quickly inspect and sniff at food before I eat it. This is a residue of having a father who grew up in the projects with 12 brothers and sisters and never wanted to throw food away. When my sister and I were little, my dad would heat up old stew for lunch on Saturday (even though we had it on Sunday) and it would all be a shade of GRAY. Condiments would be used for months and months after their expiration dates. My dad would cut mold off things and eat them. I think this was one of the reasons that I was very skinny as a child, because I was always too grossed out to want to eat much of anything . . .

(2) It takes me at least an hour to wake up in the morning. I am not a morning person at all. Luckily, Mr. Random wakes up first and gets ready, then he wakes me up and hands me the paper. For an hour, while still in bed, I quietly and with bleary-eyes read the Post and glance up at the Today show once in a while to see if anything is going on that merits turning the sound up. I end by doing the Sudoku puzzle in the style section. Then my brain is awake enough to get up and shower and face the day . . .

Now if I absoulely need to get up right away, I can and do, but I am horribly out of sorts for the rest of the day. And don't ask me to drive first thing . . . that's much too dangerous . . .

(3) Even the thought of mayonnaise makes me ill – don’t even think of putting any on anything that you’d want me to actually eat. See weird fact #1. However, if it is freshly-homemade I’m all for it . . .

(4) I feel like I have to be prepared at all times, so I carry a ton of stuff in my purse. I always try to have band-aids, cough drops, hand sanitizer, lotion, tissues, pens, paper, allergy medicine, etc. on hand. It does come in handy though – just on Friday at a meeting someone had a nasty paper cut and bingo! I had some band-aids. I always feel like such a Mom at times that way . . . I guess it’s a by-product of my eager-to-please mentality . . .

(5) I’m really finicky about pens – they have to feel right and flow properly, or else I throw them in the trash with disgust. I am really possessive of the pens I do like, so if you borrow one, I will actually hound you to get it back, and watch you like a hawk until you do so. I like my pencils always sharpened to a nice point, and I adore mechanical pencils most of all – but there have to be refills close by. I like my books to remain in as pristine condition as possible, and when I borrow them I try very hard to make sure not to mess them up or spill crumbs. I like writing on graph type paper best, with college ruled paper close behind. I can’t deal with blank sheets very well – I tend not to be able to write in a straight line otherwise . . .

. . . so there's a brief glimpse into Random Kath's many quirks. I'm not a tagger, so anyone who wants to do this and hasn't yet may feel free to leave their five in the comments.

The weather is gorgeous in Northern VA this weekend and I hope to take a little advantage of that today, if it doesn't rain . . .

Happy Sunday!

2 comments:

Virginia Gal said...

hee hee, I'm the same way about pens and I know people think I'm a freak but I always feel like saying, hey hey hey, that's MY pen, I didn't buy it for YOU.

I have taken to wrapping those free address labels around my pen ends so people know that THAT is my pen.

Good to know I have a kindred spirt out there : )

Rhona McAdam said...

I'd like to add a vote for graph paper. It's nice to be able to line yourself up vertically as well as horizontally, and the pad I've been using is narrow ruled so I can squeeze lots of words onto one page. I have a pad of A4 graph paper I got in Italy which is even better - nice to have the extra length. (-- and thanks for the opportunity to reflect on such things!)