Tag! I'm it!

I've been tagged by Judy, as follows:“THE RULES: Each player of this game starts with the ‘6 weird things about you.’ People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.”

OK, I’ll bite on telling six weird things about myself, probably mostly because I am a diehard list maker, and anything that needs to be numbered already has points in its favor (shall I count them???). I’m not tagging anyone else – not because I have some large objection to it, I just don’t know that many Bloggers personally that I feel I have sufficient friend points with to tag. So, if you are reading this and would like to add your six eccentricities via a comment, please do. Or, if you’re a Blogger, tag yourself for me, and leave me a note so I can read about you.

1. I talk for my animals. I talk for other people’s animals in front of my family. I have a hard time not doing my anthropomorphizing interpretations in front of other people. For example, when I speak for my Labrador, he has a kind of kid voice and a little trouble with his double els. He “smews the smews”, he doesn’t “smell the smells”, for example. And, if he crawls up on hubs and looks adoringly up at him, I wind up saying, “I love you Dad. You smew like beef. Do you have beef? Dogs like beef. In case you were wondering. Scratch my neck, Dad.” When he looks hopefully at one of the kids and wags, my mouth says, “Hey, Spawn, let’s go run really fast in the yard until our ears flap in the breeze! Then we can roll in the grass!” Or something equally strange.

My mother-in-law’s dog, Maggie, comes to visit sometimes, and she always “sounds” like Marcie of the Peanuts comic strip/cartoons. She’s a little nervous, so when she goes to beg for pats from hubs, it’s, “Sir? Sir? Sir? Will you please rub my head, sir?” And so on. Oddly, my family has not yet committed me involuntarily for observation; instead, they wonder what kind of voice I’ll give a pet, even one in a home we’ve just visited.

2. I have a huge yarn stash, but I don’t think that’s particularly weird for a knitter. I also have a stationery stash. I love really good quality paper. I love stuff with my name printed on it, and if it happens to be on good quality paper, even better. I have personalized memo pads left over from a job I haven’t had for almost 20 years, and I think the company went defunct over a decade ago, but, by gosh, I still have those pads. I finally threw out the stationery with our old address from 10 years ago. It might be a “Kilroy was here” thing buried deep in the warehouse of my mind that makes me keep this stuff and/or like it.

3. I am strangely attracted to sticks. Perhaps I was a Labrador in a former life (which would explain a LOT) and never got in that one last game of fetch. When I was a kid, my Dad gave me a pocketknife, as one of his life truisms was that everyone should have a pocketknife. (So, there, TSA!) We would sometime sit out in our back yard and strip the bark off of sticks with our pocketknives, side by side, not talking much, just spending time together. Sometimes, when we went fishing together, those pocketknives came in handy for cutting bait or tangled lines, or whiling away time while waiting for a bite by whittling on a stick.

I’m invariably very happy when I find a nice stick – fairly straight, not too many knots or boles or whatevers, and about three to four feet long. The first time my now-husband, then-date and I went camping, I was thrilled to find a nice stick. I waved it at him and said, “Hey! I found a really nice stick!” He laughed like hell, even bent over and hooted and slapped his knee. I was at a loss as to why that was so funny until I realized he hadn’t heard “nice stick”. He had heard “nice d*ck”. Guys are so weird.

4. I don’t trust raisins. I know they’re healthful, full of iron and fiber, and I can eat them out of a package that has just been opened with no problem. If they’re in a salad or food, or it the package has been open for a while, I don’t trust them to be raisins anymore. They could be flies that drowned in the mayonnaise, or maybe I thought they were going to be chocolate chips in my cookies, but they turned out to be raisins instead, and that really disappoints my expectant tastebuds. When they’re dry, they get that funky brown crusty thing going on, which is just wrong for food products to have – it looks like tree fungus or something. Don’t ever serve me Waldorf salad at an open-air picnic, either, no way. Those could be flies, and, man, I’m not even coming close to taking a bite of it, not to please ANYONE’S mother. Besides, mayonnaise on fruit is….wrong.

5. Ice in my cold drinks – I like more ice in my cold drinks than anyone else I know. I will pile it up precariously over the top of the glass before putting the beverage in. Fast food restaurants, regular restaurants, whatever, no one ever puts enough ice in my drinks but me. I have no idea why. After it’s been shaken down and slightly melted by the beverage, I put more in, too. I also drink the melted ice, so it’s not going to waste, and I kind of like watered down drinks anyway.

6. I put reading material in the bathroom that is too boring for me to concentrate on elsewhere. OK, that’s probably hitting the TMI marker pretty hard for the more squeamish among you, but it’s true. I get scholarly magazines from two organizations I belong to, and while they are certainly worthy publications, I just can’t get into them while sitting on the couch or at the table, or riding in a car. I fall asleep or get exasperated with waiting for the point to be made, or even some really stirring verbiage. While enthroned, it’s a different matter, and I really do read them then, and then I can feel secretly smug and virtuous. I don’t read much in the tub anymore – I’ve dropped too many novels into the soapy water over the years and choose not to run the risk anymore.


OK, what odd things can you tell me about yourself?