Stuff You Might Not Know About Me

So I'm sitting on the couch, eating a turkey-and-cranberry sauce sandwich as is my day after Thanksgiving ritual, and I realize that that's a little weird. Not weird to me, because that's how I grew up. But Ryan thinks it's gross, and when I stop to think about it, he's right. If I hadn't eaten a turkey-and-cranberry sauce sandwich every day after Thanksgiving my entire life (barring the year we ate Pizza Hut for Thanksgiving, of course) I'd think it's gross, too. But to me, it's perfectly normal. So I decided I'd make a list of things about me that you may or may not know, and yes, I think it's perfectly acceptable to keep a scorecard and thereby rate how much you know me.

1. I love mechanical pencils. I'd rather write in pencil than pen, and I'd rather write than type (although I usually choose typing just for efficiency's sake). If I have to use a pen, I prefer black ink to blue.

2. My biggest pet peeve in the entire world is listening to people chew. I could write an entire blog entry about how much I hate this, but that's a little obsessive and I'm trying to let go of that. But seriously, people - chew with your mouth closed!!

3. Brand new notebooks are almost sacred to me. It's like the clean pages represent a new beginning, like I can use this book to create the best version of myself. It is so special that I frequently don't use the first page - I leave it blank, so as to go back and turn it into a title page if the notebook ends up as special as its potential warrants. It has never warranted, though, and every notebook I own has child scribbles on every third page.

4. Similarly, I sometimes buy a new pen (ahem, or pencil) to go with my new notebook. As if the inspiration for my bestselling novel is trapped and just waiting to be released by the perfect writing implement. I can spend a lot of money in the school-supplies aisle to assuage all of my unfulfilled dreams.

5. I think I could eat mint chocolate chip ice cream every day of my life and never get tired of it.

6. I love the smell of baking bread, but am always disappointed that it doesn't taste as good as it smells.

7. I cook food that I think will impress people. I don't know why, but it seems that I have a lot of emotion tied up in food. I think it's because no one ever raves about the way I washed eight loads of laundry in one day, so I have to make a killer batch of cookies and earn my kudos that way. My favorite people are the ones who I can count on to lavish praise over my food.

8. I have the ability to cram an inordinate amount of dishes into the dishwasher. If someone else loads the dishwasher, I can come in behind them and rearrange things just so, and fit another 3 bowls and a cookie sheet in there. We call this "Tetris-izing." Of course, this is pretty annoying to the original dishwasher-loader, so I usually refrain. But the talent is still there.

9. I'm pretty good at Tetris. And also, Whac-a-Mole.

10. I love being alone. Love it. Probably because I never, ever am alone. I think Ryan feels a little threatened by this, but it's not a reflection on him - if I had to not be alone, I'd rather be with him. I don't want to be permanently alone, of course. But the idea of a weekend somewhere all by myself is the closest thing to heaven I can imagine.

Okay, that's it for now. I have a feeling that the more I think about it, the more my personal idiosyncrasies will come to the surface, but if I throw them all out at once, everyone's going to think that I'm a crazy nut-ball. A few quirks is okay, so long as the surface veneer of normalcy isn't disrupted too much. Oh, and one more bonus quirk - the cranberry sauce has to be the jellied kind, that comes out of a can and still looks like the can. Now, that's totally gross.