Sheila has listed five of her quirks. Here's the thing: Hers are cute. I especially like the insistence on socks.

Mine are . . . well, look, how about I try just to pick out the five least repulsive? Would that be okay?

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1. I hate showering first thing in the morning. Or . . . the afternoon. I have sometimes put off taking a shower until 8 or 9:00 at night, to be honest. The best I can come up with is, taking a shower first thing means I'm doing it because I have to be somewhere, and I hate starting my day having to be somewhere, somewhere outside my cozy little house, somewhere I might actually have to do things. The showering is just the launching pad for everything I hate. The only time I'll shower relatively early is after a workout, so I've actually been better about prompt showering lately, because it's not that I like to be filthy and disgusting--and baths do not freak me out like this at all. So I don't think it's the bathing so much as it is what the bathing stands for. I hate the symbolism of showering! Or, I'm a freak. It's one of those.

2. I make schedules for myself. This is funny because there's never that much to get done. What would happen if I actually had very much (or even anything important) to do, I wonder? I would probably waste three days on just the scheduling.

So I make schedules, and they're the lamest things in the world: 10:20 a.m. Sort laundry 10:25 a.m. Start laundry 10:30 a.m. Dress 10:35 a.m. Workout 11:35 a.m. Change laundry. But if I do not make the schedule, nothing gets done. I have to write it all down or it doesn't happen.

3. I fly into a killin' rage if you hang up a towel with the tag showing. I won't cut off the tags because it leaves an "itchy spot" on the towel. Also, I think it looks bad. BUT THE TAGS! MUST! NOT! SHOW! when the towel's hanging from the rack. Actually, I think I just have a thing with towels in general; see the "About" page, item 11.

4. I do not eat fruit. I will not eat fruit. This is where someone always goes, "Really, not even strawberries?" or suchlike, but listen: Name your fruit, it doesn't matter, I won't eat it. There's something sickly-sweet about most popular fruits--oranges, melons, and bananas, ugh, especially bananas--that triggers my gag reflex and I literally can't swallow a bite of the stuff. If I'm feeling nauseated and like I need to throw up, but I'm having difficulty, all I need to do is recall the one time someone got me to try cantaloupe and whoops!--Thar she blows! I will eat applesauce, and I will eat apples or blueberries baked into pies only. But that's IT.

As for the people who like to get preachy about the Vitamin C deficiency I so obviously must have due to my fruit aversion, I would remind them that I consume mass quantities of tomatoes, peppers (THREE times as much vitamin C as citrus fruit! Suck it, orange lovers!), and chiles (TWICE as much vitamin C as citrus!). I'm not getting rickets scurvy (thanks, Rob!), so relax.

But could you eat that banana in another room please, because I can't stand even the smell of it. Thanks.

4. My bed-sharing etiquette with men leaves something to be desired--basically I make all the rules and they are permitted to make none. For example, I will hold them. Under no circumstances are they to attempt to hold me. I can't STAND being held while I'm trying to sleep. The only purpose of a man in bed beyond the obvious one, as far as I'm concerned, is to function as my personal life-sized teddy bear. The poor man who attempts to turn over during sleep is inevitably met by me violently shoving him back into position, facing away from me, so I can keep an arm slung over comfortably. I have heard the complaint "my arm still feels asleep, I must have slept on the same side all night" many a morning. I say "Oh, that's too bad" and nothing else.

5. Input I cannot control makes me insane. I had to sit (well, not sit exactly) through an episode of Celebrity Fit Camp 2 and--AND--an episode of Hogan Knows Best recently in the workout room, because that's what the bitch who got there before me had the television set to, and several times during the hour I literally bit my tongue to keep from screaming, "Please! I'll watch anything else! Bowling! Golf! Poker! CROSSFIRE! Just turn it! Turn it to something else before I lose my mind!"

But of course if you heard a stranger at the gym bust out with that speech you'd conclude that person had already lost her mind, wouldn't you? So I didn't say it. The problem with someone else's bad television habits (we won't even mention the radio) is, I cannot tune it out. Believe me, I try. I know people who can tune things out effortlessly and I'm so very very jealous of them, but I can't do it. So the result is, I can tell you everything--everything--that happened on that episode of Celebrity Fit Camp 2, even though I never wanted to know. Now my brain's storing all this information and for what? For what? (Though for the record, I am rooting for Victoria Jackson. Go Victoria!)

We will not discuss the time I suffered through Tommy Lee Goes to College, except to say that compared to Hogan Knows Best, it is marginally less likely to drive me to suicide. Tommy Lee, for all his haggard pierced-and-tattooed vileness, has a certain charm, and he does not have a vapid twat of a hyperbreasted daughter a la Hogan.

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As always, feel free to share your own.

UPDATE: Ilyka never said she could count, y'all. Maybe I just really like the number 4; did you ever think of that? Maybe it's one of my idiosyncrasies.

Posted by Ilyka at August 18, 2005 11:15 PM in navel gazing | TrackBack