I’ve been tagged twice now, so I feel like I can no longer ignore it.  Not that I was going to ignore it, but…

So here it is, I’m tagging people (I hope, not feeling real confidant in my abilities tonight).  Really quick, I want to thank Allison from http://trixfiend.wordpress.com and Allison from http://allibean.wordpress.com (I really want to include these two people in the tagging, so I’m kind of cheating by having the links here).  I’m feeling a lot of love right now.  Since I don’t want to turn this into the Oscar’s of blogging, I’m going to get on with it.

The rules are:
* link to the person who tagged you
* post the rules on your blog
* share six non-important things/ habits/ quirks about yourself
* tag at least 3 people at the end of the post and link to their blogs
* let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

So, my people are:

http://justcuz.wordpress.com

http://nerdramblings.wordpress.com

http://paperspoons.wordpress.com

http://catherineeliza.wordpress.com

I realize I suck because I wasn’t able minded enough tonight to figure out how to link the peoples names, but that’s me.  Now let me bring on the freakish personality traits quirks (what a funny word quirk is).

1. I only wear blue jeans.  I will not wear black jeans or any other freaky color that the denim manufacturer’s come out with.  Only blue will do.  Why?  I honestly have no idea, it didn’t always use to be this way.  I used to live in black jeans but for the last 10 years of my life, I have only bought blue jeans.  This rule does not apply to dress pants, those can come in any variety of colors, but denim must be blue.
2. Most of my shoes are now Crocs.  The two pairs that aren’t Crocs are winter boots for when there is just too much snow and a pair of sneakers for random purposes.  For the longest time I could not understand why my girlfriend wanted me to try on Crocs.  I thought they were the ugliest shoes ever made, this just proves that looks can be deceiving.  During the winter, I will wear Crocs with fuzzy socks.  These are the kinds of socks that normal people probably wear as slippers or something to keep their feet warm at home during the winter.  I wear mine outside, and the funkier the colors the better they are.
3. Every single time I go to the store (grocery, Target, Walmart) I buy a stick of deodorant.  I now have about 16 sticks.  It’s one of those things where I’m walking around the store trying to remember what I’m there for and I happen down the deodorant aisle, and I can’t remember if I have an extra stick.  I think I’m afraid of running out and then being the smelly lady, but I really don’t have a sweating issue so I don’t know where this obsession comes from. 
4. Despite the fact that I am horrible at taking pictures (delayed reaction on my part) I buy photo frames like they’re going out of style.  I will buy them from anywhere I go to; Target, Kohl’s, the dollar stores…you get the point.  Now that I see it in print, I realize that the frames are a lot like deodorant.  I can’t go anywhere without buying them. 
5. If for some reason I decide not to buy something, I will obsess over it.  It’s like buyers remorse, in reverse.  I decide not to buy something, so I put it away.  This obsession starts the instant I make my other purchases.  I keep thinking about how much I wanted the object I put away.  It’s all I can think of until it drives me insane.  I research it on the Internet to see if I can find it somewhere else cheaper and if I can’t I rush back to the store I found it at originally.  I don’t even take it as a hint that maybe I’m not supposed to have it if it isn’t there when I go back.  I just step up the online shopping a notch until I find the item.  Once I get it I’m calm and happy…until the next time.  I imagine that this is what a drug addiction is like.
6. I like to be cold.  Not freezing, just a little cold.  I will open the windows in our apartment in the dead of winter just so I can be a little bit cold.  I think I like the layering up more than the being cold.  I think this is a funny thing because I was born in June, three days after the first official day of summer. 

Don’t let the title fool you, I’m not a freak freak.  Just a freak in that tattooed and pierced kind of way with penchant for full make up in the daytime kind of freak.  Maybe the kind of freak who really never completely outgrew her Goth tendencies from high school.  Yes, I was a sort of Goth/Stoner chick.  And while I’ve mostly outgrown the dark clothes and incredibly pale make up, apparently I didn’t really outgrow my freakish tendencies.

This is what happens when I walk into a small shop/store:

1. The store clerks appraise my appearance (note the jeans, hooded sweatshirt/t-shirt, tattoos and piercings) after assessing me they then say hello.
2. Said store clerk now watches me like a hawk from their perch behind the cash register.
3. When I (heaven forbid) take too long to decide what I would like (candles are a major purchase for me, this can take a lot of time since I need to smell every individual candle 16 times) said store clerk asks me if I need any help.  When I politely tell her (it seems only females ask me this) that I’m doing okay and if any issues should arise she will be the first to know, I get the look (raised eyebrows, nodding of the head and the polite chuckle).
4. The store clerk now starts dusting and straightening up the shelves immediately in my vicinity, because apparently I’m thinking of stealing the items now.
5. At this point I either get fed up/pissed off and decide not to buy anything and storm out of the store OR I take my choices up to the register and proceed to blatantly empty my pockets and purse looking for my wallet (my purse is meticulous and I always know where my wallet is, I just want to make a point to the store clerk).

Don’t get me wrong, I know how I look and maybe it has something to do with the fact that while I don’t look like a teenager anymore, I guess I don’t really look like an adulteither.  I have tattoos, lots of noticeable piercing (face and ears) and a penchant for dark eyeliner.  All of these things combined with my typical wardrobe tend to make store clerks noticeably nervous.  They either think I’m going to try to steal something or rob them.  These stores always make me feel like I need to buy something so that they don’t think I’m stealing.  Considering the buyers remorse that I get, I don’t know if I would be able to live with the guilt that would come from stealing something. 

So to all the store clerks who work in small shops, rest assured that if you see me enter your store I will not be stealing from your store.  Just because I look like a freak, doesn’t mean that I don’t have the money to shop at your store.  But, if you continue to follow me around the store, waiting to catch me in the act not only will you be wasting your time but I will leave without giving you any of my hard earned money.  Do not base people on their appearance, it only hurts us and makes you look like the freak.

I really do love my husband.  That needs to be said first and foremost.  I love him, but…

When did rinsing a dish, that once had pizza or anything vaguely saucy, cheesy or greasy on it, become optional?  This sauce doesn’t jump off of the plate because it sees soap and water.  The sauce would have come off the plate easily last night if he had taken 5 seconds to rinse the damned thing!  Instead I had to spend 5 minutes with hot water scorching the skin off of my hands. 

And he wonders how many different kinds of hand lotion I actually need.  We obviously don’t have an automatic dishwasher.  And I try not to complain about the fact that I have become the dishwasher since becoming unemployed.  I get that he’s tired, and I am genuinely sorry about this.  But does me scrubbing away at a hardend piece of cheese for 10 minutes really make us even?  No, he’s still tired and I’m just more pissed off than I was before starting the dishes.

Friday afternoon/early evening, I went with my girlfriend and her son (the 2 year old) to a children’s museum.  My girlfriend is a daycare teacher and very into her son learning and being around other children.  Since her husband is out of town on a job, I joined her for the excursion. 

The museum was great.  I like to just watch people (I will often go to the mall and sit somewhere and watch the insanity) and I think parents (sorry) tend to be the funniest breed ever.  The children don’t really care what they are doing, all they know is that they are free to run around and in this particular building there is nothing that they are not allowed to touch.  Of course all the parents are trying to get pictures of their children doing these wonderful activities and a lot of the parents I observed wanted their children in some ridiculous pose.  This alone was worth the price of admission for me (it should be noted that no admission was paid on my part because my girlfriend and her husband had bought a membership for one year).

The museum closed at 5:00 pm, so of course everyone and their mother is out on the road at that time because it’s Friday and rush hour.  Not to mention that we have to pass O’Hare Airport which always makes for fun traffic, and then on top of all of that it starts to snow.  People in Chicago always act like it’s a big surprise that we get snow.  Every year we go through some kind of dementia that makes us forget that we experience a good portion of the weather elements including, but not limited to, snow.  So, traffic has slowed to a standstill and my girlfriend and I start to think that the planes are landing on the toll road when the boredom of being stuck in a car for over and hour in the same 2 mile strip of road takes over. 

Digital cameras are dangerous objects for bored people to have.  I don’t know how legal this was, but let me say that no license plate pictures were taken and I’m pretty sure that no one actually saw the flash but us.  And God knows we weren’t doing anything above 5 miles an hour.                                                                                                                        

The thing that started this was, well some people think a car is a dome of invisibility.  I saw a guy all alone in his car and perhaps due to his bad habit, that is for the best.  If he hadn’t been knuckle deep into his nose, I would have let it go and not said a single word.  But he was, so I had to say something to my friend.  At this point she said that wouldn’t it be funny if people thought someone was taking pictures of them in their car.  I agreed (boredom will make all good judgement go out the window) and proceeded to dig my camera out of my purse.  Now, I wasn’t really taking pictures, more holding the camera up to the window and pressing the button so that the flash would go off.  I have some wonderful pictures of snow on the windows.  At one point we saw a car that was pulled over on the shoulder.  He must have slid on the snow because he was facing traffic the wrong way.  They were teenagers of course so we had to take their picture.  My girlfriend took the picture from her side of the car (we weren’t moving) but alas more pictures of the snow. 

One day a week my husband works late so I go over to my girlfriends house to have dinner with her and her family.  This is sort of my extended family because I have known the couple for about 15 years.  I went to visit her in the hospital the day her son was born, and so on.

Their son is turning two this February, so he’s pretty much got this whole toddler speak and thought process going on.  You can just see it working in his head when he looks at you. 

The adults are sitting at the table still eating dinner, and he’s roaming free because he was done.  Anyone with a toddler knows that it’s just easier to let them be free then to even attempt to keep them in their seat while you continue to eat.  So, he’s roaming free and just yelling “Ma!”  Kari (the mom) being the good mother she is, keeps replying “What?!”  But he just keeps calling for her.  Finally he comes into the dining room/kitchen and once again yells “Ma!”  She looks right at him and says “What?” 

(This is where it gets funny, I hope.)

At her reply, without hesitation, he says “Uh…” and looks away, sort of like he suddenly forgot what it was that he wanted from her.  He even held up a finger as if to say “Hold on, it’ll come back to me.” 

Toddlers, natures tiny comedians.

So I’m innocently sitting on the couch, kind of watching TV and playing on our laptop computer and my husband comes out of the office and states that he hates the Geico commercials.  I intelligently say “huh?”  and he proceeds to go on a rant (he’s not the only one) about their business hours.  Something about how a normal workday is only eight hours but Geico claims to have 10 business hours. 

I have to be honest.  I didn’t even know that a Geico commercial had come on, let alone that it made a statement about it’s hours of operation. 

When I once again looked at him trying to figure out what the heck he was going on about, he looked at me like I was the crazy one.  Me, who was sitting here minding my own business and not bothering anyone in the least.  I think I was just innocently playing a game of Mahjong, but he had to go and start complaining about something that didn’t even know had entered my conscious realm. 

Of course he has gone to bed, so I’m stuck here wondering “What the hell was that all about?”

I have a confession to make.  I love pens.  I realize that this is a weird thing, but it must not be too weird because I see boxes specially designed to showcase pens.  I don’t have one of these boxes, and it isn’t for lack of wanting one.  I just don’t know if any pen would ever get to live in the box for very long before I remember why I loved to use that pen. 

I have a lot of these pens by a company called Sensa.  These are the greatest pens ever, in my opinion.  I have one that’s really heavy and I used to like to call that one my official pen.  I used it when I signed the lease for our apartment, when I signed all the papers for my car, and I used it a lot when I worked at the library.  I was a supervisor there, so I would end up writing a lot of employee evaluations and letters to bad patrons.  Admittadly I always had to go back and type these things, but I loved to write them all out first.

Anyway, the great thing about these pens were their gel grips.  I have a lot of calluses on the sides of my fingers because I love to write, and the gel grips are really cushy to hold onto.  Those gel grips gave me the ability to soften the calluses and actually (almost) have soft skin on my fingers again. 

This last Christmas though, my dad and step mother sent me this really cool pen and pencil set.  This set looks like a couple of number two pencils.  The pencil is mechanical and even has one of those pencil topper erasers.  It actually makes me a little sad to have this set now because I’m not working and I’m not in school, so I feel like I really have no use for them.  I find myself making lists just so that I can use these items. 

Pens and pencils make me happy.  I sometimes go to office supply stores just to look at the pens.  It’s it a weird little collection I have, and my husband makes fun of me for it.  Hell, my friends make fun of me for it.  My one girlfriend likes to be out in public somewhere and ask me, very loudly, if I have a pen she could borrow.  I think she does this just so she can see me whip out the vast array of pens that I keep in my purse and then proceed to laugh at me as she pulls her Bic out of the front pocket of her purse.  I carry pens the way that some people carry weapons. 

Whenever my husband is with me on an office supply store outing, and I go to look at the pens and start to whine and whimper like a puppy who has to go for a walk, he’ll look at me and roll his eyes and ask me what I need with another pen.  Now, I admit he makes a valid point, but still.  These pens make me happy, and he should be happy that this is the obsession I choose to run with, you know instead of a $400 pair of shoes that I would have no where to wear them to. 

I get the feeling that good taste has officially gone out the window with this blog.  I told myself that I would not put my whole life before the world, and yet I can’t help myself.  I’m sorry if anyone finds this entry offensive in any way, shape or form.  And now…

If single people really knew what married people talk about, I don’t think they would be rushing to the altar.  I don’t know what other people talk about with their spouses, but my husband and I actually had a full blown conversation about gas, as in the passing it sense. 

I know, we live the glamourous life.  Please, don’t try to imitate us as it will only make us blush and give us bigger egos than we really deserve.

The thing that lead to this conversation was the fact that we had gone out to eat at Bakers Square.  This usually doesn’t lead to gas, but we tried their new dessert and I get the feeling that was the cause of this outbreak.  So, I was basically sitting on the couch in gas pains while my husband sits beside me in happy contentment.  His theory behind this has to do with our physical sizes.  His reasoning is that since he is a male at 6′ tall, he passes gas longer than I do as a female at 5′5″ tall.  He even had estimates on the amount of time that gas is passed (i.e., him at five seconds and me at two seconds, therefore he is passing more gas at one time than I am).  He was able to keep a straight face for about two minutes while he gave me his “scientific” reasoning as to why I’m in pain, while he’s fine.  Although, the instant he looked at me and saw the shocked confusion on my face, he rightfully lost it. 

You know what’s really sad?  This isn’t the first time we’ve had a conversation like this.  Sadly, we have quite a few conversations that revolve around bodily functions.  We’ve talked about the best way to burp (it’s not quietly into a napkin or your hand followed by a polite “excuse me”), why it’s better to be a guy when you have to pee really badly, why comic books are better than book books (comic books have pictures so that you don’t actually have to read words to follow the story), why movies based on comic books usually suck (apparently it’s too hard to compact an entire 80 something book series into an hour and a half) and many other various things that are way too personal to post.  It’s weird that these things don’t effect us in different ways.  I mean, do all couples have weird and random conversations about this?

On the afternoon and evening of January 20, 2008 while watching the day’s football games, I saw what I think is one of the most hilarious commercials I have ever seen in my life.

It was Bud Light commercial.  And in it, was some song and dance about the greatness of Bud Light, and then something about the ability to talk to animals was mentioned.  This cuts to a man opening a bottle of Bud Light, looking at his dog and asking the dog how his day was.  The dog then proceeds to say “Sausages” over and over and over.  The man continues to look at the dog, while nodding his head, and saying “Ok, good talk.”  The dog is still saying “Sausages” at this point. 

I love this commercial and yet I have only seen it twice.  I have looked for this commercial on the Bud Light website and You Tube to no avail.  If anyone out there can tell me where to find this commercial or forward me a link to said commercial so that I can sit in front of my computer all day laughing hysterically to myself, I would be ever so grateful.

And while we’re at it, if anyone knows where I can find the commercial for E.P.T. digital tests where the announcer says that this digital test “Will be the most sophisticated piece of technology you will ever pee on” would be appreciated too.

First off, I’m a big reader.  Since I haven’t been working I’ve managed to read about a book a week.  Which is why this annoys me so much.

Have you ever picked up a book, read the back cover and thought that it could be a really good book?  It has all the makings of a really good story.  It even has one of those “Today’s Book Club” stamps on it.  Now, granted this isn’t Oprah’s stamp, but it’s a stamp none the less.  Someone liked this book enough to recommend it to the TV watching world.  You have heard people talking about this book too, and they all liked it.  When you have gone to the library, it is never on the shelf…it is that popular.  It’s a National Bestseller! 

So, when you see this book sitting in the bargain section of a major book store, you think “Woo hoo!”  You buy this book that is normally about $14.00 for $3.99, take it home and start to read it.  Only to find out that everyone who has ever talked about this book has no idea what they were talking about.  But you push on, because TV people, a community, and the public in general just cannot be wrong.  This book had to have just been on the bargain shelf because it’s three years old, and not because the story was boring as hell.

I came to the conclusion about the boringness of this book about fifty pages into it.  I am now on page 250 of  267.  I actually want to hurt myself for continuing to read this book.  I don’t know if I’m a glutton for punishment or if I really thought that the story would suddenly get better.  There was a point when I was reading it that I had a hard time putting it down.  I don’t know if I was just that bored or if the story at some point was that good. 

Now, here’s my problem with this book.  Just because I think it’s boring doesn’t mean that hundreds of people are wrong.  I’m one person.  So, part of me doesn’t want to give the title of this book because I don’t really want to deal with the angry people who may have loved this book, yelling at me.  Yet, part of me feels like I have to warn people about this book, you know so that they don’t waste their time or money.  I have read lots of books that people have hated and that I have absolutely loved and vice versa.  This is one of those books that I hate, but I don’t want to offend other people who may love this book. 

So, what is a woman to do?  Do I call this book out, or just let it go?  Do I let people tell me why they loved this book?  Do I just continue to bitch and moan while with holding valuable information?

Screw it, the book is “The Confessions of Max Tivoli” by Andrew Sean Greer.  The book is basically about a man who physically ages backwards (born old) but mentally ages normally.  It is a love story, I thought it would be different.  I guess I should have read that back cover more carefully.  Again I’ll say that I’m only one person.  My opinion doesn’t really count for much in the long run.  Hell, I usually prefer horror and chick lit.  My favorite author is Brett Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Less than Zero), so maybe I have no right to judge this book.  I just can’t decide though whether or not to finish the last seventeen pages.  I don’t really know if I can be anymore disappointed with the story, but at this point part of me doesn’t care how it ends.