My Top 10 Idiosyncrasies

Everyone has their idiosyncrasies. Not everyone is willing to share those with the rest of the world. Being a Millennial, I think that mine are equally, if not more interesting than everyone else's. Hence, I have a blog and hence I am posting them for the world to see.

10. If there is a Top Ten Countdown on TV, I have no choice but to watch it.

Some countdowns have included, the Top 10 One Hit Wonders, the Top 10 Celebrity Meltdowns, the Top 10 Celebrity Pregnancies, and the Top 10 Redneck Weddings. Buzzfeed is my Kryptonite now.


9. I feel physically ill if I spend more than $12 on a shirt.

I don't feel like this one warrants explanation. It just means that I shop at Goodwill and really I only feel sick about it until I forget how much I spent on the shirt. I am the queen of hand-me-downs.

8. I am afraid of someone hiding in the backseat of my car and attacking or even just surprising me while I'm driving. Especially if it is raining.

I think this might stem from an urban legend I heard in grade school. The one where a lady is driving home and a trucker keeps flicking his lights on and off at her, then she freaks out because he follows her home and she thinks he is going to kill her, but it turns out that there is a man in the back of her car who keeps trying to stab her and the trucker saves her life by flickering his lights. Also, I feel like this is a prime example of how not to do "show not tell" writing. Read a better version here.

7. Red meat gives me hives. (Are undiagnosed medical conditions considered idiosyncrasies?)

I don't actually know if red meat gives me hives. It seems like everything gives me hives now. Currently known culprits: red meat, allergy medications, pain medications, large amounts of sugar, pants that are too tight, socks, seat belts, and lemongrass.

6. I love to subvert people's expectations of me.

Something I regularly do that just makes me giddy with joy, is to go straight from work, wearing professional attire, to a comic book store and then to walk in and start conversing with the guys working about the latest comic releases. While I like surprising people with how much I know, I hate when people assume I don't know anything. Example: When I worked in a video game store, I had a man walk in looking for a flight simulator game. I hate flight simulator games, so I didn't know a ton about what we had. When I went to ask a co-worker (also a female) she was able to give me some titles to direct him toward. When I went back to help him, he made the comment, "It is OK, no one expects you to know about games because you are a woman." Luckily, I brushed it off, and didn't think to be upset about it until later. I don't know if I would have been able to do the same if it happened again today.

5. In college, I found out that my now-husband was allergic to me.

My favorite scent was and still is coconut anything. The more it smells like sunscreen the better. What didn't occur to me was that they used actual coconut in the shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, and body spray that I used. (I don't do moderation very well.) So, my lovely husband, who is allergic to coconut, stayed quite about the fact that he itched like crazy after we saw each other because he didn't want to hurt my feelings. We had been dating for almost 3 years by the time we figured this out.

4. I yawn every time someone says the word "yawn," makes a yawning noise, or really does yawn. (I yawned four times just while writing this sentence.)

This isn't usually a problem unless someone finds out about it. (Yes, I know I am broadcasting it to the Internet as I say this.) I worked in a warehouse for a while, and my boss found out about this lovely trait of mine. He would hide behind corners and make fake yawning noises and then run away giggling as I yawned and shook my fist at him. He didn't believe that it would really happen every time, so he kept trying it. There was a day at work where he made me yawn so many times, I had tears running down my cheeks. I tried the yawning test, and failed before the movie even started because I read the title.

3. I have severe technophobia, but I still consider myself to be technologically savvy and used technology in almost every aspect of my life.

I think this stems from a weird experience I had as a child that made me connect hackers and Satan. My favorite website used to be Bored.com. I know, I know, but that was the best there was for me on the Internet at the time. You can't visit it anymore, but it used to be links to some of the coolest time wasters online. It had games, MadLibs, personality quizzes, etc... I found one link that was supposed to be the "Internet reading your mind." You had to look at a number on the screen, not click on it or anything, and the computer would tell you what number you looked at. I tried it a dozen times and it worked every time. I even tried it where I didn't pick a number, and it managed to get the number that I was kind of thinking of on accident. I tried to figure out what it was, a math trick, a visual trick that made the numbers look more appealing, anything! I couldn't figure it out, so I told my mom about it. I'm sure she meant well, but she told me that I needed to be careful and not to visit that site anymore because it was probably Satan and to remember that evil is a real thing that needed to be feared. I took that to heart and have been scared of the Internet ever since. Now, let's be real, my fear of the Internet has matured and become much more logical than "it is Satan's fault," but it is fear nonetheless.

2. I am terrified of anyone coming near my Achilles tendon, and I can't watch videos where someone's is hurt or severed.

Again, I think this one come from the Internet. The lesson from this, is that the Internet is a terrifying place for children. The urban legend that everyone's grandmother forwarded to them was about a man who would wait under womens' cars and when they opened the door, he would cut their ankle so they couldn't get away before he took their purse and stole their car, leaving them stranded and bleeding in the parking lot. Thanks again to Snopes for letting me know that these are all fake. They never go into too much detail, but being the curious kid I was, I did some investigating and learned about the Achilles tendon in your leg. I learned that it stretches clear up your calf and if severed, your muscle will snap and bunch up  behind your knee, leaving you unable to walk. Things that bother me because of this (which I will not post because I can't bring myself to search for the YouTube clips of them)

• The video footage of a famous runner snapping his Achilles tendon when taking off in a race. (This is the worst one because you can watch his muscles move all the way up his leg.)
• The scene in Kill Bill Volume 2 where the Bride gets out of a coma and hides just inside the door to slit the ankle of the gross nurse.
• Any scary movies where someone is hiding under the stairs, not because anything really happens, but because something MIGHT happen.
• Watching a scary movie while sitting on a chair that has space underneath it. I have to pull my knees up on to the seat of the chair.
• Really anything where someone's ankles are vulnerable.

1. I hold my breath when people I don't know walk past me so I don't accidentally smell them.

I really don't know where this one comes from. I just started doing it one day. It doesn't matter if I smell a strangers perfume or their body odor, it freaks me out. Truth be told, if I haven't seen you in a while, I will probably hold my breath when you walk by too. Sorry, it's nothing personal.

A Foray into Gardening

For weeks now, I've obsessed over the fact that I don't have a hobby. In the last few years, I've been so busy with work that I didn't have time to even think about extracurriculars. I was lucky if I stayed awake through dinner, let alone taking time to focus my energy on something frivolous. Luckily, I've moved in to a much lower-stress job, that allows me to take time for myself and find something I really enjoy.

I tried various arts and crafts type hobbies just to see if they were for me. I made a great lamp shade with some modpodge. But it made such a mess, and it was such a struggle to keep the cats away from it while it dried, that it didn't seem like something I would do just for the fun of it. I would certainly go back to it if I came up with something that I would specifically like to have/make.

I tried decorating ceramics with sharpie (thanks Pinterest!) but I quickly found out that I only had enough patience and creativity to do one mug. Not to mention, black seems to be the only color that doesn't rub off the mug. And, lesson learned, sharpie colors do shift when you bake them in the oven. My mug still turned out really cool though, and I have two other bowls waiting for me to figure out what I want to decorate them with.

I tried what I called a "visual journal," something between a scrapbook, a coloring book, and an actual journal. Those types of  "create everyday things" always the same, you stick with it for about a month and go back to it when you have a specific reason to, but otherwise, they lie there, mostly untouched. I think I've filled in about 10 pages, 3 of which are filled with paraphernalia from a vacation I took. I wish I could stick to this one, but I'm not a journal everyday type of person. However, one of the podcasts that I listen to suggested that I write even about the mundane things, because those can be very interesting to go back and read years down the road. For example, something mundane to me now, might be indicative of a lifestyle that becomes drastically different from the day-to-day of my future, super-successful self. Then I can look back on my peasant life and appreciate how great I've got it.

For a while now, I've been telling myself that I am a photographer. I've even gone on some "photo shoots" trying desperately to do some nice floral photographs. I'll take pictures of anything and everything. Unfortunately, it seems that I just stumble into some of my best pictures. For example, I took this one just walking down the street while I was in high school. I didn't even realize how good it was, I just thought the couple looked sweet.

And this one, I think, is only good because of the bees in the background. I didn't even realize that they were there when I took it. I don't feel like I should be able to take credit for accidentally good pictures.

Then, the other day, I found my sister's Instagram account and it was hard not to give up. Not only has she been a talented artist since she was old enough to pick up a crayon, but she also has an amazing eye for photography as well. It was really difficult not to give up entirely and just leave it to the pros like her. The hardest part was looking through photos that she took while I was with her. She somehow saw something beautiful and interesting, while I just saw a building.

So, I have decided that I am taking up gardening. My mother sent me an Easter basket with a really nice smelling flower, a hyacinth I think. My whole office smelled nice all day. Then my mother-in-law gave me an Easter basket with tomato, cucumber, and basil seeds along with some gardening gloves. Thank goodness for these two, otherwise, I would have no idea where to start. My mother-in-law also helped me realize that, hey, maybe I should get some gardening tools before I start this whole process. So, I've decided that I will plant flowers in the front of my house and some fruits and vegetables in the back.

Now for the hard part. I rent a modular house. The foundation of the house is lined with gravel that is sort of set up like it was supposed to be landscaped eventually. I'm tinkering with the idea of removing all of the gravel and replacing it with soil. But my husband helped me dig up some of the gravel today to see how deep it went before we hit dirt and it turns out that it goes down almost a foot. I'm not sure if I will be able to afford all of the soil that it would take to replace the gravel. On top of that, I don't know if my landlord would actually want me to landscape for him. He said to go ahead and tear up the yard to garden if I want to, but I'm not sure where he would fall with the area around the foundation of the house. If worst comes to worst, I found the coolest idea for a cinder block garden on Pinterest! Maybe we'll give that a go. At the very least, I would like to get one salad out of this hypothetical garden by the end of the summer.