Ten Things

At this point in the evening, I'm running on fumes.  It's 7:20 and I'm watching Jeopardy.  I have been awake since 4 this morning, because SOMEONE needed a ride to the airport.  That someone has a job interview in Utah tomorrow.  Just between you and me, I'm deeply disturbed about the possibility of moving to Utah.  In the past couple weeks, I have read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and 127 Hours:  Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston.  Aside from the obvious similarity of having authors whose first names contain no superfluous letters, these books both take place in Utah.  After reading them, I am having a hard time deciding which fate I would prefer over living in Utah:  would I rather be stabbed to death by a Mormon Fundamentalist or amputate my own arm after spending several days drinking my own urine while pinned in a narrow canyon?  Kind of a toss-up.

Anyway, I made this list of ten random insights about my favorite topic - myself.  Then I got a little carried away.  You know what they say.  When the cat's away, the mouse will play.  With Andy gone until Saturday, I'm seriously living large.  Cleaning, organizing, blogging, going to bed early.  It's like a one-woman version of The Hangover up in here.

Without further adieu:

1. I have never changed a diaper in my life.  I am so not into wiping the butt of any other living creature.  I think if I ever produce any human offspring (as opposed to sticking to my comfort zone of rearing feline and canine buddies) I think I'm just going to keep the kid in a baby pool or a sandbox or something and just hose it down once a day.  Sort of like crate-training a puppy, right?  Bet that kid would be potty trained inside of a year (if it isn't removed from my custody sooner). 

My complete ineptitude with children is both the cause and the result of never babysitting.  Sort of a positive feedback loop - I didn't like kids, and didn't want to babysit, so the longer I went without doing it, the more I became afraid I would be terrible at it if I tried, so I avoided it like the plague.  Then one time I babysat my youngest cousin, and it was alright.  She was maybe 8 or 9 at the time, and I was around 22.  We just watched some Disney movie about a hot teenage boy on a competitive double dutch team (what the hell?) and I drew her a picture of a unicorn stabbing a cupcake with its horn, which she thought was the greatest thing ever.  I'm not sure if babysitting family counts, because she (and her parents) already knew I was weird and they weren't expecting a whole lot.  And, thankfully, no diapers were involved.  Because seriously, an eight year old in diapers?  I'm not going near that one.

2. I absolutely hate being interrupted.  It happens with disheartening frequency because I have a quiet voice and I am not assertive at all.  I try really hard not to interrupt people, and if I realize that I have done it, I make an effort to either let the other person speak or go back to whatever they started to say after I've blurted out my own thoughts.  I recently decided that when I am interrupted, I should refuse to finish whatever I've started to say because the other person must not value my input, so I'd be wasting my breath to continue.  I realize this is kind of immature and spiteful, and it has had mixed results so far.  I think it pains me more to withhold something that I thought was important enough to say out loud than it bothers the other person. 

I don't always have a lot to say, so when I do, I usually feel pretty strongly about communicating it.  Not that my brain is empty at other times - I think a lot but I'm not often compelled to share, for various reasons.  Much of the time, what I really want to say would be totally inappropriate.  Self-censorship is an unfortunate side effect of adulthood.  If only there were a medication that could alleviate this...oh wait...it's called booze.

3. I'm a stander.  I just really don't like sitting down for long periods of time.  I don't even really enjoy going to the movies most of the time because I don't dig on sitting still for two-plus hours.  Maybe you can chalk it up to all those years of going to standing-room-only concerts and remaining erect (tee hee) for hours in a crowd of smelly teenagers bobbing their heads to the beat, but I really enjoy standing.  I feel less lazy and more energized than I do when I'm sitting.   Especially at work.  If I spent my work day in a chair, I would probably fall asleep.  Thankfully, my work surface is counter-height so I'm not hunching over a desk, which would be really uncomfortable and look super weird.

4. I cannot stand the word 'moist.'  Seriously.  It gives me the willies.  It just connotes so many disgusting images and sounds.  I'll take wet, soggy, damp, soaked, flooded, humid, muggy, dank, or even clammy.  Just not moist.  Anything but that.  This is kind of a problem because I love to bake, and I certainly don't want my cookies or muffins to be dry.  But do I want to call them wet or soggy?  Probably not. 

I used to loathe the C word, until I met someone who was one.  I know, I know.  As my grandmother probably says (because she says a lot of smart things), using foul language is a sign of having a limited vocabulary.  However, with all the expansive verbiage at my disposal, I decided that this person could not be so fully and succinctly described by any other term.  If you're curious, this person was a former roommate who, in complete seriousness, threatened to stab me in my sleep.  Among other things, not limited to accusing me and two other roommates of being the spawn of Satan and anointing our bedroom doors with "holy" (read: canola) oil and raiding someone's curbside trash to bring home a cushionless, leaf-covered couch that smelled like a wet sasquatch.

5. As much as I would love to be a spontaneous person, I'm a slave to routine.  It probably borders on OCD.  It's bad.  I have to make plans far in advance, not because I'm busy doing important things, but because I have to brace myself for a change in my routine.  I'm like an 80 year old woman who has to be home by 7:30 to watch Matlock or whatever.  Except my Matlock takes the form of:  eating certain foods, eating at certain times, laying out my breakfast supplies and outfit for the next day, and spending an unhealthy amount of time brushing, flossing, gargling, eyebrow grooming, lotion-applying, etc.  I guess a lot of these things are work-induced survival mechanisms to help me cope with the fact that I am not fully functional in the morning until I'm showered, fed, and caffeinated.  But if it wasn't these things, it would be something else.  I'm like a social and behavioral Benjamin Button.  By the time I'm eligible for an AARP card I'll probably be at the point where I can like, decide what I'm going to wear right before I need to get dressed.  Maybe in my mid-90's I'll really throw caution to the wind and start doing blow and haphazardly loading the dishwasher.

6. I am moderately proficient at a lot of things, but not amazing at anything.  Some people would just say they are a jack of all trades and a master of none, but apparently I'm not great at getting to the point, either.  The thing is, I get really excited when I try my hand at something new and find that, at first, I have some kind of aptitude for it.  Once I hit a plateau where I stop making easy progress, I get discouraged and lose interest unless there's some kind of fabulous incentive to press on (or if some external pressure/threat of unpleasant consequences forces me to keep trying).  I don't always give up on an activity entirely, but I will usually develop a 'whatever' attitude towards something if I feel like I won't ever be the best.  I don't like not being the best.  I don't like to struggle. 

This past summer, I tried to learn how to knit.  A nice lady at the yarn store showed me how to get the needle started and get a few rows going.  I went home and practiced, and after a few hiccups, it proved easy enough, albeit time consuming, to knit row after row.  However, when I looked at my instruction book to see what I should do once I was ready to finish off the end of my rather anemic attempt at a scarf, I was baffled.  I could not make sense of it, no matter how hard I tried.  I was afraid I would get to the end of the scarf and ruin so many hours of work.  I found excuses to set my project aside.  Obviously, it's too hot to knit in the summertime.  It's so itchy to touch all that woolen yarn.  Oh, it hurts my hands.  Truthfully, it hurt my self-esteem.

7.  One of my pet peeves about culture and the media right now is the prevalence of food advertisements that equate unhealthy foods with emotions.  There's just so much wrong with that I don't even know where to start.  Yes, eating a meal has traditionally been a time to gather with family or community.  Food can be social, it can be celebratory or ceremonial.  As with any sensory experience, food can take on an emotional connotation and evoke strong memories.  That's all fine, when we're talking about a home-cooked meal made from whole food ingredients.  I know I have a lot of nice memories that flood back at even the thought of certain foods, like the Finnish bread my grandmom makes every Christmas, or the amazing carrot cake my mom and grandmom made for my birthday one year.  But when you go so far as to name a candy after an emotion (Hershey's Bliss?) or have commercials with cartoon moms serving little cartoon children freaking pop tarts for breakfast as if that is what a loving, caring mom does, we have a problem (yes, let's give a growing child a hunk of artificially flavored, sugar coated cardboard for the most important meal of the day.  oh, you put it in the toaster first?  here's your mother of the year award).  Not only are these commercials trying to force us into unnaturally associating their food product with happiness and being cared for, but they are portraying them as everyday foods.  I could go on about this for days. 

I don't want to insult anyone who may be an emotional eater or who just doesn't see anything wrong with eating processed foods and/or equating said foods with emotions.  But, given the health status of the majority of people in this country, this is clearly a very real problem.  I realize the irony of ranting about equating food with emotions given the name of this blog.  I should probably explain, if I haven't already, that it just seemed kind of funny to me at the time.  I was probably subconsciously inspired by that scene in Mean Girls where Lindsay Lohan's character is getting the rundown on all the different lunch table cliques and one group is the girls who eat their feelings.  Kind of funny in that context, but not so funny in reality.  I've only recently realized how much these kinds of commercials bother me, because I went without television for several months and that respite from commercials has made me a lot more critical now that I'm watching non-Netflix/Hulu TV again.

8.  My first celebrity crush was Davy Jones.  Yup, this guy:

If you're wondering, I was three years old at the time, and he was a DREAM. BOAT.  (Because you don't understand the concept of reruns when you're three, not even when those reruns are almost 20 years old).
 
9.  Running out of steam here.  Losing interest in this project.  I've been awake for 16 hours, what do you want from me?

10.  I got nothing.  I was afraid this wouldn't be the best '10 things' list, so I got discouraged and gave up.  I'm nothing, if not consistent.