Weird with a capital P

My dear amiga Corey has tagged me. I now must bestow upon you seven weird things about me.

1. I have a fear of spiders. Not just an, "eww creepy!" fear. A hyperventalating, panicky, blood runs cold, sheer terror, heart stopping, throat closing up, fear. I can't even kill them, I'm afraid to get close. In the pre-arachnaphobia (that word alone gives me chill bumps) days, I could just swat them with a flimsy flip flop, or *shudder* squish them with a bunched up tissue and flush 'em away. Now I can't even look at the creepy crawler for fear it will turn it's multiple beady eyes on me and take a flying leap toward me. I can't look at pictures of the small monsters, if I see them on TV, I have to slink low in my seat and cover my eyes with my hands like a child. The weirdest thing....my fear extends to all crawlies. Even ants and roly poly's. All insects creep me the hell out! Or creep the hell out of me. Or creep me out of hell...something like that. Just writing this post has made my skin crawl.

2. I hate pickles with a passion. My dad used to drink pickle juice out of the jar. I can't even stand the smell, it is bile inducing. I remember going to the movies with a friend who was about to have her baby. She was about to pop any day, and her cravings were at the intense grape-jelly-and-sardine-sandwich-NOW stage. I was eager to get into the theater and grab some good seats, but she wanted to stop at the concession stand. I nearly balked until I noticed she was salivating and looking a bit like a deranged wild animal. She asked the young teen behind the counter for one of those giant, rather vulgar looking, pimply pickles. I started to complain, but one look at her puffed up face, cankles, and that insane end of pregnancy glint in her eyes made me bite my tongue. Throughout the movie, I was trying to supress my gag reflux and bury my face in the giant bucket o' popcorn to fill my nostrils with the smell of artificial butter rather than the scent oozing off of her pickle. The sight of the pickle juice running down her chin and her glazed over giant-pickle-orgasm eyes made my stomach roll. Yeah, I hate pickles.

3. I rub my feet together to fall asleep. I'm sure this is a common practice. But I suffer from insomnia, and often spend hours upon long endless hours laying in bed trying to shut my brain off. As a result of grinding my feet together in the same spot for several hours each night for multiple years, I have whittled myself from a size 9 shoe to a size 7.

4. I ate my first steak at age 19. My father was a hunter and oft cooked up a tantalizing, sizzling, tender strip of delicious....wait, is that deer??? The thought of consuming Bambi's cousin with a side of A1 just seemed so wrong. Then when it came time to eat real steak, I just couldn't do it. After getting married and becoming great with child, I went out to dinner with my husband. I perused the menu for about 13 minutes, each time the server came by to see if we were ready to order yet, I snapped at him. The bright picture of the steak on the menu looked pretty delicious, and my iron was low, so I figured, why not? I ordered the steak (extremely well done, mind you) and when it came I stared at it for a moment. I poked it with my steak knife, almost expecting it to jump up and scramble across the table, mooing in a panicked state and knocking over my water glass before jumping to the floor to make an escape. I gingerly cut a teensy corner piece off, examined it for any pinkness, traces of blood or eyeballs, or vessels of *gag* blubber running through it. I nibbled a miniscule bite off of the corner of the piece and immediately sank into my chair. An involuntary groan came out of my mouth and I started cutting furiously at the slab of meat and shoving it in my mouth faster than I could chew. My husband just stared, his fork and knife in mid air. He knew better than to say anything to the hormonal pregnant lady, but I was starting to elicit stares and whispers. The other patrons were staring at me with open mouths. But I didn't care. I was in the middle of a meat induced coma and nothing mattered but the juiciness that is animal flesh. Thus my love affair with steak began. Like a crack junkie, I'll always be chasing after that first high, that moment when I first sank my teeth into meaty perfection.

5. I like cleaning the bathroom. It is such a small room, and I can get it done so quickly. Then it is nice and shiny and clean. I can never get the living room or kitchen to gleam like that, and it always takes forever to clean those rooms. Plus I get a great sense of joy in providing my family with a spic n' span toilet to rest their hineys upon.

6. This is hard! Seven things, really? Oooh, I know one. I love the smell of skunk. I do! Not stale skunk that has been run over a multitude of times and needs scraped off the highway. But a live one, who has just sprayed his munky scent upon an innocent victim. I love it! Everyone else holds their nose and complains loudly, but I take in deep sniffs of the odor! I also love the smell of gasoline, especially diesel, spray paint, and rubber cement. Yeah, I was the weird kid in kindy garten who was sniffing the paste (well, and eating it too. You know you tried it!!!).

7. I can do complicated math problems in my head, including long division. I hear a song once, and I can memorize the majority of the lyrics, I retain tons of useless random trivia, and I am fairly smart. But I get left and right mixed up all the time, I have a hard time following simple written directions, and I have to drive the same route at least 20 times before I remember it. I can hardly hold a map the right way, and when it comes to technology, I'm completely lost. When Tony is telling me how something works I lose him around "Ok, this is how..." I just kind of zone out and mindlessly nod as he speaks what sounds like Swahili. I just don't get it.

Ok, now here is the part where I tag seven other people and hear about how crazy they are, right? Well, the majority of my blogging buddies have friends lists that are nearly identical to mine, so we could go in circles forever! Instead I'll make up something new, since I'm cool like that and all!

So I want to hear about ten things that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside from....(drumroll please).....

Meghan
Corey
Ingrid
Keara
Megan

Then of course you pick five more people to hear from after you post!

This sums up the post that reveals I have stayed up way too late exposing my oddities to you all!