Five for Friday: Five Weird Things You May Not Know About Me.

Good morning!

I was going through my week...and what a week it was, with it being PM's first week at his new job and Captain Nubbin trying to do something he's very unaccustomed to doing:  Something constructive at work.  (This just in:  It didn't go well.)  I realized, last night as I was chatting with Skippy, that there are some odd things about me that most people don't know about me.  Sure, you all know my issues with public restrooms, but believe me, that's not even the start of my oddities!

So, why not?  Let's delve into five weird things you may not know about me.

5)  Pink wine gives me heartburn...except when I'm at Marie's house.

I'm like most women, I got my start with wine by drinking White Zinfandel in college.  But over the years I've noted that when I drink that lovely pink wine I get the WORST heartburn.  I've switched, in my own life, to pinot noir or some other darker red wine, and I've even delved into whites lately, all with good results.  But pink wines, and this has come to include moscotoes, I can't drink without heartburn.

Unless I'm at Marie's house.

Somehow, when I go to my friend Marie's place and we play a little game we call "A Movie, Two Moms, Three Glasses of Wine"  I'm perfectly fine.  No heartburn, no nothing.  So you figure that one out.




4)  I'm terrified of basements at night...except I forget I am until I'm actually IN the basement.

When I was fourteen I saw "Night of the Living Dead."   The scene where the little girl is in the basement terrified me so deeply that even now, more that three decades later, I fear being alone in basements at night.  That includes completely finished rec rooms.  The WEIRD part is, I never remember that fear until I'm actually IN the basement doing something completely normal, like folding laundry or something like that.  Suddenly I'll realize I'm alone in a basement at night and I get into a bit of a panic and MUST, MUST stop what I'm doing and RUN up the stairs to the safety of the upper level.  


3) A Grilled Cheese Sandwich MUST come with jelly or jam.

I never thought this was a weird thing until I got old enough to date boys and felt the grilled cheese sandwich was safe food to eat in public.  (A sub category of this blog should be "5 foods I will never eat in front of strangers or people I want to impress.")  I grew up putting jelly on grilled cheese.  Traditional: White bread, American cheese, grape jelly.  But there are so many variations and depending on the cheese, there are jams/jellies that pair nicely.  I can't pair wine with food, but I know which jam goes with what cheese on a grilled cheese sandwich.  

My dream job, other than rock star movie critic, is to own a restaurant called "Say Cheese" and have nothing but grilled cheese sandwiches and variations on the jam/cheese combos.

2)  I won't eat Christmas Cookies from a big mixed up tray of cookies.

I know I've mentioned this, but it bears repeating because, as fluffy as I am, this is one weird thing about me.  It's a big deal because around here that's what we do during the holidays, we make fifty kinds of cookies and slap half a dozen of each on a tray and pass the trays out to friends and neighbors.  As a kid I used to love it...but something happened one year when, newly moved into our first house as grown ups, our neighbor, a lovely man, brought us a giant tray of cookies because he'd just gotten a cookie press and just COULDN'T STOP HIMSELF.  

When I bake Christmas cookies, and I do manage to crank out a couple batches, I keep them in separate containers and serve them on separate plates at parties.  It's weird, but it's who I am, and for as fluffy as I am...I tend to NOT gain weight over the holidays because I rarely eat the cookies.

1)  And unmade bed makes me insane.

My mother never makes her bed.  NEVER.  In every other aspect she's a ridiculously clean, tidy person, but her bed is always a tangled hot mess.  Growing up, she used to tell people she didn't make her bed because if anyone broke into the house she wanted them to think someone had already burgled the place.  

Meanwhile, my house usually looks like a scene out of "Animal House" but my bed is made.  I'm the first person out of the house every morning...but Hubby knows he'd best make the bed because if it's unmade when I get home I will comment on it...while making the bed.

I was the annoying girl in college who would go into my friends' dorm rooms and make their beds.  I had one friend who yelled at me for several minutes because I was making her bed and she simply DID NOT WANT IT MADE.

See, I can't even understand those words.

My kids NEVER make their beds...and I make sure their doors are shut so I can't hear the unmade beds calling to me to make them.  Skippy and I had a long debate last night about the joys of an unmade bed versus a made bed.

There you go.  My five weird things.  So read, enjoy, discuss.