OMG WTF, I’m Old

As I’ve mentioned before, since I have now been without cable a few years, instead of watching TV I usually watch original comedy stuff on YouTube – guys like this one and this one and this one, gals like this one, this piece of citrusy goodness, and, of course – these guys, as they’re the home team.

A month or so ago, I was voting in a Survivor-type contest among YouTubers, and I kept seeing this one three-letter acronym used over and over again in comments on people’s videos. It was confusing me terribly as to why people were repeatedly writing this acronym in regards to YouTubers they apparently liked.

Because when I was in college and thereabouts in the Eighties – and into the Nineties, for that matter – all those bad boys with their Black Flag and Minor Threat and Bad Brains records (i.e., the ones I always wound up with – go figure) used to stencil this three-letter acronym on guitar cases and skateboards and stuff. Or my ex’s slightly nerdy, acid-dropping, D&D-playing friends would fake tattoo it on themselves. It was spray painted on the walls (always either in black or red) of at least three apartments I remember in Murfreesboro and two in Nashville, and on the outside of one garage.

You’d have been hard pressed to walk into Cantrell’s, the Exit/In, or Elliston Square in the Eighties and not seen this acronym scrawled on a t-shirt, an Army jacket, or a pair of torn jeans in black magic marker. After all, it was all, everybody’s an anarchist, yada yada and all that… way back then in the ol’ Dark Ages. After all. (I just wanted to fit “all” into this paragraph somehow, just one more time.)

And it – said three-letter acronym – it wasn’t very, well… nice. (And understandably so, since everybody was an anarchist and all that.)

So a month or so ago, I was really having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around why in the world people kept leaving in comments things like:

“(insert YouTube comedian’s name here)… FTW!”

I guess it’s one of the disadvantages to not having kids/teenagers to set me straight – and next time, maybe I’ll have enough sense to just go straight to Urban Dictionary instead of straining my brain over something like “For The Win!” for days. Or a week and a half exactly.

But I guess at least not having teenagers meant I got to spare myself the inevitable ridicule when Mom asked why all these people on YouTube were telling all these other people to f*ck the world, right?

Anorexia Jetsonia

I haven’t really been in a blogging mood, which I guess has been kind of obvious.  And I hate that, because I have let something slip by on the music blog I absolutely did not mean to, but maybe I can get myself sort of re-motivated into things next week.

Anyway, no, I haven’t really been in a blogging mood, and apparently I’m not in an eating mood either.  Which is kind of bad when you only eat maybe once a day and sometimes not anyway, which is kind of good when you’re almost too poor to eat anyway, but I know it’s not good and healthy to only eat maybe once a day and possibly even not.

I DO get hungry.  It’s just that there’s nothing I want to eat, and if there is, after two bites I’m over it.  Stuff I have eaten and liked my entire life – I don’t want it and/or it doesn’t taste good.  Everything is just totally blah.  In a way it’s a good thing that I don’t eat much when I eat anyway, but it’s just kind of disturbing to get two or three bites into something and just be like totally unable to finish.

The only things I really want to eat are breakfast food or Mexican food.  But the way things are going – even though I’m too destitute to be able to go out to eat – if I COULD go eat at Cafe Ole every night this week, I’m afraid by night #2 I would be over that too and not want that either.   Or Waffle House.  Which is totally unimaginable to me that I could go in either and not feel like eating anything on the menu, but there ya go.

I was kind of jonesing for some Pancho’s today and like I said, Mexican food is one of the few things that sounds good these days.  So since I had to go to the grocery store anyway, I picked up fixings for nachos and grabbed some Pancho’s dressing too and that pretty much satisfied the craving AND I did actually eat and it was good.  Except I ate so little and there’s so much left that I could probably eat for the next week… and now I’m a little afraid I’m going to lose my appetite for the one thing I always have an appetite for.  Plus I ate so little, but so way much more than I usually do, so now I’m stuffed and miserable.

I bought some bananas today because they looked good and appealing – which I’m sure I will eat.  I like fruit, I just don’t buy much because normally most would wind up going to waste.  Maybe I should just buy fruit for a while.  But what if I start not wanting to eat fruit either?

Weren’t things supposed to be like The Jetsons by now anyway, where you just took a pill and bam, that was an entire meal, and we all fly our cars around instead of driving them and – right?

The Cook in the Lunch Room’s Ready to Sell

I was reading my hometown (one of them anyway) newspaper online yesterday, and I found myself curiously drawn to a picture in it of the lunchroom in my old junior high school (one of them anyway – I went to two, and only went to this one for my seventh grade year). I kept looking at it; finding it odd for some reason unbeknownst to me; then would go elsewhere, then back and look at the picture again.

Then it finally dawned on me why it kept bothering me and seemed so odd. It was because I spent my entire seventh grade year in that school without ever having set foot in that cafeteria.

Strange, huh? But it just so happened I had a class that year where it was allowed – and nearly everyone in the class took advantage of it – to spend our lunch period in that classroom instead, so pretty much all of us did. I always brought my lunch or didn’t eat lunch at all anyway, and I didn’t have any classes down in that section of the school where the cafeteria was anyway, so I managed to avoid ever setting foot on that part of the campus.

Just one of those weird things. Shrug.

Not Really THAT Picky

Things I used to refuse to eat as a child that I now love:

1. Vegetable soup
2. Raw oysters
3. Spinach
4. Artichokes
5. Breakfast food at any time of day besides breakfast

Things I still won’t eat:

1. Brussels sprouts
2. Country ham
3. Turnip greens
4. Turnips
5. Liver
6. Chicken livers
7. Radishes
8. Celery (unless it’s in vegetable soup)
9. Veal
10. German chocolate cake

Uncomfortably Numb

My left hand has gone numb. This happens sometimes, and it’s my own fault that it happened. But it’s not real great when you have to use a computer 10 hours a day for a living and also have a large freelance job due in less than 48 hours.

The feeling’s coming back already but it may take a few days to get back up to par, so posting may be a little light for a day or two and limited to Project 365. Which is probably just as well, I’m in a pretty foul mood and I try to avoid actual posting much when I’m feeling like crap. ’til later…

Oh, to Sleep, Perchance to Dream

For those that think they’d love to be able to work from home, here is the one really bad thing (and really the only, to me) about doing so…

On a day like today, when I am so very tired that I could just about fall over – when you are mere steps away from your nice warm comfy bed and can’t go crawl in it and sleep for a while, it is absolutely pure, sheer torture.

Of course, this is my own fault – she who declared not just one, but two days in a row to all kinds of folks in e-mail, on the phone, on here – everywhere – that both nights I was going to pop a couple of Tylenol PM early enough and force myself to go to bed and maybe, possibly get into some kind of at least semi-normal sleeping schedule again starting this week. Or at least sleep, which would be a definite improvement over most of the last two weeks.

And indeed, I had another one of those unplanned, inadvertent brief naps again last night, dozing off while reading something or another on the ‘Net after finishing off what posed as dinner (a cup of Lipton Cup-a-Soup, gallbladder friendly and fat free or mostly). Dozed for maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes, might have been an hour, I dunno. Phone woke me up, thank God, or I might have been once again sitting there out cold at the desk until after midnight again.

Which, granted, would have been SOME sleep as opposed to what I got, but it’s not like I’m getting a good night’s sleep when I do that (and usually am so sore all over I’m moving around like an 110-year-old woman for a little while after waking, I don’t think my neck is ever going to be not sore again).

I don’t know why I can’t sleep when I should, nor why I keep sleeping when I shouldn’t be able to, both are getting kind of disturbing. The other day when I was stuck at the auto repair shop for the better part of the day, I dozed off while reading and was out for like two hours, with two screaming kids and their frazzled mom right next on the couch in the super-crowded waiting area.

Narcolepsy? Probably not, at least I don’t guess so. I think it probably doesn’t help matters that I really haven’t been eating all that much as a rule ever since I started dealing with this gallbladder crap back in July, which was a mystery ailment for a while, so (counting, whoa) I guess we’re going on six months now of that, but I’ve been taking vitamins and all that kind of stuff and trying to keep as healthy as possible through it all.

As for the not sleeping part, I don’t know. It just gets to when I should probably go to bed and I’m just not tired one bit though I pay for it later in the day, every day. And I’ve always had pretty terrible habits of staying up too late and not getting all that much sleep during the workweek, usually, but this is bizarre even for me, and even more bizarre because I’m not sleeping really on the weekends, either. Smiley shared some good advice in comments about Ambien and melatonin several days ago, but of course, being transportation-less right now, I haven’t made it to the store. And should have thought to order online or something last week I guess, but my brain is obviously operating on low power, right? (I say that as if my brain ever operates normally…? Heh.)

Anyway, yeah, this long – two weeks, fifteen days, whatever – on so little sleep, I’ve got to do something before it turns into, like, Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer here, presumably without the latent cannibalism and homosexual plot devices, of course. (Okay, there was probably a better film about insane women reference there, I just grasped for the first one that came to mind and we all know by now my brain’s not working properly. I just mean I’ll be babbling and incoherent and hallucinating if I don’t get some decent sleep and at least sort of nightly soon. Not that anyone would notice the difference, right?)

Of course, I’m guessing too that once all this mess with the car situation gets settled (nope, still no updates or news there, still waiting), maybe things will even out. Of course, NOW, thanks to all that, being so behind and nowhere near being ready for quickly approaching Christmas is not helping, but it’ll all be all right once Christmas gets here. I just wish I could delay it another week or two.

I also have a bunch of blog posts put aside that I kept starting last week and the week before and never did finish a single one of them, which is also kind of unusual and bizarre for me, ‘cos once I get in the writing groove I generally don’t stop until I’m finished, even if it about kills me. So if I’d just go tie up all those loose blog ends and finish them, I wouldn’t have to do anything but copy and paste probably the rest of this month and still have a post or two a day on the blog. Who knows, all things considered they might be best left alone, ranting and ravings of some crazy chick who hasn’t slept in two weeks.

All I know is, once again, I’m going to attempt to really sleep tonight, even if it’s four or five hours or something. I’ve got stuff I’ve got to do, and then some more stuff I wanna do ‘cos I’m probably going to have to work Wednesday and Thursday nights and won’t be able to do anything else. And then it’s all about sleep. Sleep is good. Sleep is our friend!!!

KC and Greg – my so-called friends – used to say I came with three settings, but they’d argue with each other about what they were. KC said I came in Blonde, Dizzy Blonde, and Dizziest Blonde; Greg said it was Unscattered, Scattered, and Super Scattered. I’d guess I’m about amped up to Super Scattered Dizziest Blonde at this point, but it’s OK. Not like I haven’t always fully embraced my dizzy blondeness anyway.

Just need sleep. And for my brain and mouth to start cooperating with each other and working together again, and that’ll be cool. On the next episode of To Sleep or Not to Sleep – tune in tomorrow and we’ll see…

Looking Through a Cracked Mirror

So, welcome back to Jeez, This Blog is Turning Into a Drag Central again. Sorry, I seem to have misplaced my sense of humor temporarily. The Lynnster Zone, Your Daily Dose of Blah.

Today I got four whole hours of sleep, which is certainly more than I’ve had at one time in the past two weeks, so that was good. Except I would have really liked to have stayed in (my very warm) bed for a few more hours, seeing as how it was my day off. But nope, there were vehicle matters to be attended to, so I rose to greet the day with hope and a halfway decent night’s sleep behind me.

So about those car matters. Dead Vehicle #1, the one that conked out last weekend, remains where the tow truck left it in front of my house. It’s older and has needed much more work besides just the known popped drive belt, so the logical decision was to get Dead Vehicle #2, the newer, in for quick repair.

It was thought – keyword there being THOUGHT – that all Dead Vehicle #2 needed was a new battery. Got the battery jumped off, drove it to the auto place. Battery and some other general maintenance, winterizing, and tire rotation (and airing up since DV#2 had two near-flats) planned. It was noonish. Estimated time of departure: 2 p.m. Which would have given me the rest of the afternoon to take Dead (and Expired Registration) Vehicle #2 through inspection, and then to the clerk’s office to pick up new tags & plate.

Well, first of all, don’t know why I didn’t expect the monkey wrench to fall in my lap anyway. Because it always does. It shouldn’t have been unexpected. I am not a pessimist, I’m just a realist. If something can possibly go wrong and I’m involved, it most likely always will.

Oh no, DV#2 doesn’t JUST need a new battery (might not even really need one, but it has been a while). DV#2 has an electrical short. That is going to require DV#2 to be towed to another shop that does electrical repair since where it currently is doesn’t. Then, after however much money said tow and repair will cost, expected then No Longer Dead Vehicle #2 will return to Place #1 for the rest of what it was supposed to have done today.

So about 6:30 p.m. (my entire day off now pretty much having been spent in the waiting area at the auto shop), I walk a few blocks to Kroger because I have no food I want to have for dinner at the house. Then I walked a couple more blocks to Starbucks for a white mocha latte while I wait for the cab I called, since I decided not to walk the three or so miles home in the freezing damn cold and my not-as-bad-as-the-bad foot was hurting pretty bad anyway.

Funny thing about my feet. The bad one is the left one that I sprained horribly a little over three years and wish I had broken instead, because (as the doctor said at the time) it’s given me trouble ever since that it might not have if I’d broken it. But that one wasn’t acting up today. Instead, because I walk just wrong enough to compensate for the bad one, I have effectively now made the right foot probably worse than the bad left one as far as pain, swelling, and general yuckiness. But enough about my f’d up feet.

So now after having gotten home pretty late, spending most of the evening on the phone with my mom, my future mom-in-law, and my friend and former neighbor (who is doing much better, thanks) and generally getting nothing else I had planned today and tonight done… I think I’ll just finish catching up for the evening and soon crawl in bed since it’s like two degrees anyway. Soon anyhow.

At least I did almost finish Anthony Kiedis’ Scar Tissue while waiting around the car shop, after having started reading it, I don’t know, nine or ten months ago. That wasn’t exactly the accomplishment I had planned today, but I guess it’s one.

Well, tune in tomorrow, it can probably only get worse…

Good Morning, Good Morning

So, boring catch-up stuff…

Got the car home, it was intact. And, it would appear that what actually happened was not the alternator but a broken drive belt. Whatever, I’m just glad it’s here now. One less thing to worry about.

The friend that had the wreck on his way to coming to help me went home from the hospital yesterday. The pneumothorax (collapsed lung – uh, yeah, you can tell I worked for a lung surgeon for 14 years, huh) was only 5%, which having one is never good but 5% is better than double digits %. He also has a few cracked ribs and badly bruised shoulder. I know he’s glad to be home. Turns out the vehicle that hit him (an SUV) had little to no damage and nobody hurt.

The plan is I’m gonna get my other car to the shop Thursday (my day off) where hopefully all it needs is a new battery and there will be no unexpected other surprises. Fingers crossed.

A few asked about public transportation… well, it’s available here, kind of a joke but it’s here and I live near a bus stop, yep. We have a trolley line too, but it doesn’t come out this far east. The thing is, since I work at home all but maybe three or four days out of the year (I work for a local company), it wouldn’t be the biggest deal to be without a car… except for the fact that my primary weekly or biweekly shopping usually includes 30 and 40-lb. bags of pet food and such – can’t really lug that stuff around on a city bus. Of course, you can now order that stuff online shipped directly to you, and I haven’t checked into it that deeply yet, but I bet they kill you on the shipping charges for heavy items like that. I unfortunately also don’t live close at all to any stores of any kind, really. There used to be a few over here, but one of the main drags in the city, while not really within convenient walking distance, is not that far away, so what stores there were nearby have closed.

Anyway, things are little more stable and calm here right now so that’s good.

I just wish I knew why I can’t seem to sleep lately. Not only for obvious reasons but this is REALLY unusual for me, I’m generally a major sleeper. I might stay up late most nights, but given the opportunity any time I’ll sleep forever, and I didn’t even really do that last weekend. I’ll doze off here and there for a bit but then I’m awake again indefinitely, and in fact, I haven’t actually slept in my bed for any extended length of time but once in the past week and a half or so. I guess all these all-nighters working my butt off doing freelance work has finally started to catch up with me, and I think what I probably need to do tonight is round about some decent hour take a couple of Tylenol PM or something and just go to bed. There’s no way I can subsist on one- and two-hour naps indefinitely, I don’t think, and considering how much I love to sleep when I can, this has just been bizarre.

Off to start the workday before the Blogging Police get me for BWSD (Blogging While Sleep Deprived)…

Let It Bleed

If you get a chance tonight or in the morning, hop over to Secret Cables and give nashgirl some encouragement towards her making another effort to give blood tomorrow. I know just how she feels, and I think it’s awesome she wants to try again and wants to help.

I have only given blood twice in my life, and not only am I an extremely slow bleeder like she is – both times I passed out cold. I also accidentally tried to cut my hand off once, and the same thing happened.

You may say to yourself, “But Lynnster, I thought I read that you have worked in the medical field since you were 16 years old.” Indeed that is true. And I have even worked in two emergency rooms, including a busy one in south Nashville back in the late ’80s. That’s why this story’s even more crazy.

And ironically, the first time I gave blood was when I was a senior in high school as well, back four million years ago. The Beta Club at my school was sponsoring a blood drive, and pretty much all of us who were 18 and eligible signed up to give. They had assigned a time for each of the givers, and I just happened to wind up the first one on the list.

So the morning came, and we were all lined up by our assigned times in the gym. I was #1, and a boy in my class who had not only the biggest (size 14) feet in class but the entire school – we’ll call him Bigfoot (don’t get excited, Newscoma) – was #2. Bigfoot and I went thru all the usual registration rigamarole they do when it’s your first time, and then were sent to the other side of the gym to take our places on the lounge chairs they had set up.

So they stick me, and I commence to bleeding. A girl in my class who was in the Beta Club was parked next to me as a “watcher”, and we were just hanging out there chatting about whatever.

She told me, later, that I was in the middle of a sentence and suddenly, my head just went down - thunk! – on my chest. I was out like a light.

It gets better. Bigfoot, in the next lounge chair over, passed out just seconds after I did. And not only that, but he went into mild convulsions as well. Rad!

I don’t know how many of the other seniors standing waiting in line turned around and walked out of the gym at that moment. I know there were a few. When I came to, it was like I’d been asleep for half a day, though I was only out for a minute or two. And I felt fine. It did take forever for me to fill the bag, but I did eventually finish bleeding.

Not sure whether Bigfoot stuck out the rest of the day or not or went home. He was still out when I came to, and there was the convulsions thing.

I would have chalked that experience up to the possibility of it having been the first thing in the morning, and I wasn’t a big breakfast eater, and that being why I passed out. But then I tried to give blood again about five years later.

The Freeloader Ex and I were living together at the time, and he was waiting tables for a living and would go give blood or plasma any chance he got, because over at the University blood center they’d pay for blood, and the plasma center paid for plasma. One day I was off work and he was going to go give blood, so I decided I would too.

Once again, it was taking forever for them to take mine. He got through, and I’d barely started. He waited around a few more minutes, and then decided he’d go outside and smoke, since it was taking me so long.

When he finished and walked back in, he about had a heart attack. Not only had I passed out again, but I had started going into convulsions this time, and the nurses were furiously trying to bring me back. And what was really freaking him out was, he said, my lips had turned blue.

Of course, I was eventually conscious again and all was well, but I didn’t feel so good this time. And there wasn’t any obvious reason for it to have happened, I’d eaten lunch, wasn’t dehydrated, none of those things.

A year or so later, Freeloader Ex and I are at home watching TV with one of our best friends, who just happened to be staying here with us and living in our guest room at the time. That best friend just happened to be the fella now known here nowadays as The Edge, nowadays known as my current better half. Yeah, I know, funny how things turn out.

I was trying to get one of those annoying plastic wrapped packages open, and had gotten out an X-Acto blade to try to get the stupid thing open. It wasn’t cooperating.

In fact, it wasn’t cooperating so much that the next thing I knew, the blade slipped and stuck itself way down deep in the lower part of the palm of my hand. Oops. And ouch.

I was rather oddly calm sitting there watching blood pour out of the wound. I didn’t seem to be bleeding all that slowly this time.

I tapped Freeloader Ex, sitting next to me on the couch, on the shoulder. “What?” he said as he turned around. And then he looked down at my outstretched hand, his eyes nearly popped out of his head, and panic set in.

Not really sure why he did this first part, but first he led me to the bathroom and held my bleeding hand over the toilet. Then (also inexplicably since yeah, we did have a bathroom sink) he led me to the kitchen, turned the cold water on, and held my hand under the water.

I think I was saying something like it didn’t really hurt that much when – they told me later – I went down and basically just melted into the floor, crumpled in a ball.

Once again, I was only unconscious for seconds, maybe a full minute at best. When I came to, the two guys were carrying me to the couch – The Edge had my feet, Freeloader Ex dragging me from under my arms. Sat me down, propped my feet up. Did probably a hundred things they thought might make me better, the only one of which I remember now was The Edge making me drink a Coke (a regular Coke) with sugar added to it.

What I remember about THEM was their faces were whiter than sheets and more drained than mine, it completely freaked them out. And they fussed and fussed over me for hours until they seemed satisfied I wasn’t going to fall over and die any second. Well, after we’d stopped the bleeding, which we did. I still have a nice little scar there.

So yep, medical person with nearly 25 years experience here, and quite a bit of experience working in the ER. And I apparently can’t stand the sight of my own blood, or at least not more than a little.

Now, I can watch anyone else bleed all day, and have seen plenty of it in the ER for sure. I can watch you have surgery (though I draw the line at brain surgery – brains are gross). Nooooo problem.

But when it comes to my own, nope, apparently not.

I keep thinking I might try to go give blood again one of these days, just to see what’ll happen this time. Stay tuned, I’ll certainly let you know if I do.

Nobody Weird Like Me

I got taggeded (sic) by Sista the other night to post six weird things about me, but the past 24 hours have been a nightmare so I’m just now gettin’ to it. I should probably call my former co-worker and see what she says those six things are because she thinks plenty I do is weird, but it’s late so I won’t. I bet she’d come up with six totally different things than these though, I might have to call her later in the weekend just to see what her six things about me would be.

Actually I have probably already posted six or more weird things about myself in recent weeks – not liking chocolate, for one – and I already posted over at Sista’s about not liking to be on the phone except with The Edge (Not of U2 – see? It works!), my mom, my sister, or my future mother-in-law (I don’t like the phone because being on the phone was too big a part of my job for too many years). But since I’ve already gone over all that, I’ll think of six new things here.

OK, so here are Six Weird Things About Lynnster.

1. I have my dad’s feet and my second toe is longer than my big toe, except it won’t straighten out (too many years in tight pointy heels and other shoes probably ) so you can’t really tell it unless I straighten it out and show you. But, I can do something with my feet he couldn’t. If I concentrate real hard for a minute, I can make my littlest toes stick way far out and it looks pretty strange. The left toe is easier to do than the right.

2. Next to my bed, there are two alarm clocks that have three alarms total – two beeping and one radio, which the latter I keep at the loud end of the dial. Once upon a time the least little noise would wake me up, but nowadays I’m very hard to wake up and can sleep thru most anything. I have had this setup for about 15 years now. Unfortunately now, lately, I’ve found I can sleep thru all three of those alarms too. Including the one on the clock that was advertised to have an “extra loud alarm”. I had an old-fashioned windup alarm clock with a bell in the mix for a while too which sort of worked, but eventually I slept through it too. Lately, I have found that the alarm function on my cell phone will wake me up (the current ringtone is The Vines’ “Outtathaway!”) but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before that stops working, too. I have two different clocks that were advertised as having “extra loud alarms” and all I’ve got to say to that is yeahsureright, NOT. Not enough anyway.

3. Back before I started working at home and what few days out of the year I have to go work at our corporate office – as well as out at at restaurants, etc. – I drank my coffee with Sweet’N Low, Equal, or whatever, but never sugar. At home, I only drink it with sugar, never the artificial sweeteners. And it bugs me if I have to drink it with sugar when I’m out of the house, or with artificial sweetener at home. It SERIOUSLY bothers me to have to do vice-versa. This makes absolutely no sense, I know.

4. As much as I love and am obsessed with music, and as long as I’ve lived in Memphis, I have never been to the annual and huge Beale Street Music Festival during Memphis in May. I’m not too keen on crowds nor traffic, and even tho there have been plenty of bands and artists I’d have dug seeing, they’ve yet to have a Lynnster-absolutely-cannot-miss one in all the time I’ve been here, so I’ve just never gone.

5. My family would like to be able to say I’m adopted because of the blasphemous-’round-these-parts fact that I hate, loathe, and despise country ham with a passion and beyond almost any other food ever. People outside the South probably won’t get it, but country ham is a pretty huge thing down here and, in fact, giving someone a country ham is a pretty generous gift around these parts – it (or a turkey) are employee Christmas bonuses at some Southern companies. Anyway, I hate it immensely. I’m sorry, but country ham is N-A-S-T-Y. There, I said it. And my family can’t say I’m adopted because I look too much like them, and now all you Southern folks that come by here think I’m weird because of it too.

6. A hodgepodge of little things for #6 – I don’t know how to grill, I am grilling-impaired. With the exception of when I was little and my grandfather showed me how to wash a glass at the family drugstore, I never washed a dish by hand until I was in college. I never mowed a yard until I was 30 years old. When I was little, I had an imaginary friend named Davy (maybe I still do!). And, I always slept with the covers up to my neck until I was a teenager. Because you never know when Dracula might show up.

OK, there’s six things plus some bonuses. Now which six people shall I tag? Let’s see… whose weirdness do I wanna see (and tagging some folks that aren’t folks other NIT folks will likely tag)… how about Contrary, Sister Margaret, kilowatthour (when you return from your trip of course!), Dirty Catholic, Bitter Betty, and pageantmom? (Maybe Newscoma and The New Jan Brady too… except Newscoma, dear, you have to post about something BESIDES Bigfoot…heh.) And anyone else who wants to join in on all the weirdness, of course!