Drat that Leetle Seester!

She tagged me for another MEME (stupid made-up word) – this one challenging me to come up with “6 Weird Things About Me, That I Want to Share with the Entire World on the Interwebs”…

I called her indignantly to inform her that there is NOTHING WEIRD ABOUT ME, and she must be thinking about her OTHER sister – The Meedle Seester!

Her responses are on her blog – The Clam Rampant, if you are interested.

This will prove to be tricky, since I remain firmly convinced that I am perfectly normal. The rest of the world may be a little…off, but not me!

So. These answers are not FINAL, and I reserve the right to change them with feedback from others, as things pop into my head at 4 am, etc.

1. I also sing to my cats (this was one of the Clam’s answers too), including made-up songs which I have penned for their amusement. It works, too, because last summer, when my Wittle Cheeters went missing, after searching for her ALL DAY, she heard me singing HER song at night and came tearing through the yard! (So, since it clearly is a good thing, it’s not weird, right?)

2. I have a terrible phobia which (I think) is pretty uncommon. I’m terrified of things collapsing. So much so that, when we would all gather in Mom’s dining room for a holiday meal, between (1) the piano, (2) the huge heavy desk, (3) the giant DR table and (4) all of us, I could barely eat my meal, I was so sure we would all fall through to the basement. When I was a child, my dad had to take me down to our basement and show me the steel beams that held up our house, because I was so afraid the entire thing would collapse. When Mom offered me one of our 2 family pianos, I had a coniption, and a large chunk of my pre-moving panic attack had to do with how much stuff I had, and how much it all weighs. (This is part of the reason why an eBook Reader appeals to me so much – 80 books stored in an 8 oz gadget!?!?!) When I get downtown, I have to really focus on not paying attention to all the skyscrapers and how much they must weigh and the fact that we have this underground sewer system and there are almost catacombs under the city and… you get the idea. And DON’T tell me things don’t collapse, because THEY DO – bridges, buildings, sinkholes in the road. So, again, not weird, right?

3. I have this quirky little OCD (I’ve posted about this a couple of times). This is not debilitating OCD (like I can’t leave my home or I must wash my hands 25 times a day) just funny little things. My original post dealt with my irritation with grocery store plastic bags and whether or not to get permanent “string bags” like they use in Europe. Well, there are all kinds of things like that. Seriously. I realized recently that I have made about a thousand bizarre food rules for myself. Example? Well, how about – I love bananas. Love them. But I haven’t bought bananas for years. Why? Because I decided years ago that, at 105 calories each, a banana has too many calories for a piece of fruit. So every time I go to the grocery store, I look longingly at the bananas (which are not only delicious and nutritious, but also cheap!) and pass them up. Never mind that I will go to the vending machine at 3 pm and buy a candy bar at 240 calories. Nope – 105 is too much for fruit! (Note: I am working really hard to unmake these rules, and for the past couple of weeks, have had breakfast every day consisting a fairly healthy cereal with a cut-up banana on it. Hurray!) However, I think it is critical to point out that, in our culture, most of us have developed all kinds of food issues, since the diet nazis rule the world. So, once again, not weird. It would be weird if I DIDN’T have food issues.

4. Now, this is probably weird. I hate, and I do mean HATE, talking on the phone (with anyone other than close family members). I actually would prefer not to talk on the phone at all, but I accept that that’s how most people communicate. I hate it so much that I tend to pace when I’m on the phone, because I’m so stressed from being on the phone. And this was true even as a teenager. OK. That’s weird.

5. I can recite entire scenes from movies and TV shows that I haven’t seen in 20 years. I mean, scenes from episodes of Moonlighting and so forth, not just the ubiquitous Monty Python quips (“I’m not dead!”). But, to be fair, so can both my seesters, so it’s a family-wide weirdness. As a matter of fact, for a while there, the seesters could recite Beetlejuice practically word-for-word.

6. I never went through a hippie phase, not even in college. I have never owned anything tied-died, I have never been interested in the Grateful Dead, I have never said “Make Love Not War” except in jest, and have generally always thought hippies had serious responsibility and hygeine problems. My mother is the oldest of her family, and the younger siblings may have flirted with hippie culture in the late 60s and the 70s, including moving to Colorado and some illicit drug use, but they were never serious hippies. Yes, I did grow up on the Beatles (George is my favorite, thanks for asking) and yes, I did have a brief stint where I thought Janis Joplin was SOOOOO COOL. Now I just think she’s sad and tragic, and I’m fairly sure most teenagers, when they “discover” her, really get into her for a while, because, as the Lalapalooza episode of The Simpsons said so cleverly, “Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel.” I don’t think that makes me weird, although it is perhaps a little unusual. I think it means I have good taste.

So there you go – I am not weird. I am the most normal person I know. You know who’s weird? YOU are!

And… I tag DJ, The Canuck, and Catholic Wife and Mother.