Five or more totally weird and embarrassing things about me

After I delete or archive all my GMail, I read No new mail! There’s always Google News if you’re looking for something to read.
So I do; hour after after; day after day. I hadn’t planned to click or read the mail. I have other things to do that are much more pressing. But sometimes I actually read many articles. Sometimes I can stop myself in time.

Bone mentioned bedroom doors being closed. Yick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have a tiny half bath in my bedroom. If I left the door open I would see white tile and a window. But I can’t leave the door open. I just can’t. Sometimes I must keep the door open for cross vent. This makes me totally nuts and I have to put an eye gel mask on while keeping the TV on with the sound on mute. I can’t look at the bathroom door at all. This is very weird and sort of precludes having overnight guests on cross vent nights. Not that I ever know when I will need it in advance. Try to keep the bathroom door open when I’m not in the bedroom.

In summer I always sleep with the air conditioning on so I don’t have this problem. In winter the cross vent from the living room is usually enough; the bedroom has a very tiny hallway so it stops much cross cross vent, unless it’s very windy. It’s often windy. I spend way too much time thinking about this.

The other day I was having an email exchange with a friend. He said he had to leave. I was deeply thinking, for me, about something and I nodded. A minute or so later I realized what I had done. Sent him an email explaining and ending with “thought you can see.” After reading that I realized that it read as if he were blind. Sent him another email explaining that of course I know he’s not blind. For some reason we’re still friends; probably because he made a Braille joke.

I never think that I’m a visual person, but I see people in the blogosphere as in a giant complex consisting of offices, schools, apartments, houses, movie theaters, beaches and mountains. Everybody is always available, never boring or having an off day. It’s an idealized world that I don’t really think about but picture. I usually do this when I’m looking at the split ends on my hair.

Many years ago I read that there was a split end from somebodies hair in a Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum. It was split in thirteen places. That is so amature; I can have over 20. Yet my hair doesn’t look like it belongs to somebody who spends her time visualizing the blogoshphere while splitting her ends. When my hair is short I never even think about it. That’s probably why I don’t like short hair, and probably why I should have it. I spent way too much money on a hair product because it said that it would keep your hair color rich looking 107% times more. I am fascinated by how they came up with that number and how I can validate it. It does keep my hair looking good.

I can be, and often am, very boring. A person in my last writing class told me that I’m much better in email and stories than in real life. Too true. I wasn’t boring when I was younger; I think that too much therapy can make a person quiet. Maybe because my last couple of therapists ended up telling me their problems. I can talk incessantly and way too fast. It depends on my biorythmn for the minute, hour, or day.

I can’t eat foods like tuna salad or egg salad unless I make it. While I love any cooked apple product, and their smell, I hate the smell of raw apples. Hate it so much I banned my family from eating apples in the car, and my mother had to take up chewing gum. I think raw apples are truly gross, and usually rottten inside. There is an exception to this: I love Granny Smith apples but never ever in a confined space.

When I worked for SSI we had truly gross bathrooms. I couldn’t even pee there; in an emergency there was a very good diner up the block with very clean bathrooms. Fortunately I know the Kegel…and could usually wait until I got home.

I have often talked about my allergy to mold and how that keeps me from staying in people’s homes. Two more reasons: I need a lot of alone time, and if the house or apartment doesn’t have a bathroom in the bedroom I’m staying in I tend to feel totally uncomfortable. I have a major love for good bathrooms which is one of the main reasons I bought this apartment.

Do love staying in hotels and motels. Even sort of scuzzy ones. My first night in Moscow, I actually spent most of the night cleaning the bathroom. My friend Angie always does that; I don’t. But a contact lens landed on the floor, I looked at it, and the grime around the tiles and set out to work. I didn’t have cleaning solutions but for some reason I had brought a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Tried to ration it, but I think the bathroom had last been cleaned sometime around the Russian Revolution. I was in the former Soviet Union in 1989 as I wanted to see it before the first McDonald’s opened. Made it by three months. Fortunately, the other cities I visited had very nice hotel rooms with good bathrooms.

When I travel now I always bring my own traveling sheets that fold up into nothing; air freshner, Lysol wipes to clean with, and now Febreeze’s spray that claims it reduces pollen while freshening the bedspread. Never know when it was last washed; even in the best of hotels. Of course I bring a traveling candle. Hotel maids love me because I thoroughly straighten out the room before leaving it each morning. Do I straighten out my apartment each morning? Most of the time but not obsessively. I am obsessive about one thing: right, clean bathrooms.

I am not a cleanliness freak by any means; if my parents were reading this they would be laughing their heads off.

I am a room purifier freak, and I constantly buy new model ionizers and air cleaners. My friend Rafe is one also; Sharper Image usually has a two for one sale and we go in on them together. I really do sometimes answer my phone “Sharper Image Warehouse.

If all of this doesn’t entitle me to The Hall of Fame of Weird I don’t what will.