Weirdness Abounds

1. I’m a Yeagley… This qualifies me on the weirdness factor alone. While I was growing up our friends, and their friends, came to our house just because we were so very entertaining. For years we thought the weirdness was just from our mother. Now that my dad is learning to express opinions after being out of the public eye for the first time in 25 years, we are figuring out that some of it comes from him too.

2. I am color obsessed… On the subject of pink. Although I admire Emily’s dedication to pink, I loathe the color (but not on her, my mother, or Krusteen of course). As a child I was dressed in pink most of the time, and quite frankly it just doesn’t go with my red hair or pasty skin. I have sworn off pink for life, including for my offspring, no matter the sex. I told my college best friend that she would know I was truly mad at her if she ever received anything pink from me in the mail. So what did she do? She showed up at my wedding shower with a pink balloon bouquet. Well played Jen, well played!

My obsession extends beyond pink however. I refuse, on principle, to allow the color of my car, or paint and accessories in my house, to clash with my red hair and pasty skin. I look bad enough under the fluorescents and color choices in public places. I even go so far as selecting game pieces that match me best. And I own many orange articles of clothing because no one wears orange better than I do.

In high school, I was teased mercilessly by Phil and an old boyfriend for knowing all the names of the various shades of green. For a long time they mocked me about “Candy Apple Green”. I also keep my hanging clothes organized according to the rainbow (you know, ROYGBIV) so that I don’t have to think too hard about matching in the morning.

3. I’m super nostalgic… Okay, I have a problem. I spend far too much time down memory lane thinking about breakfast cereals, TV shows, various fashion statements, etc…. I have exhausted many hours pumping Scott for information about his childhood toys. He had them all; he was an only child. (Come on, Castle Greyskull, really!) When I left my job in Boston, I was most easily remembered by my love of Bob Evans, the restaurant I made my co-workers go to on business trips because I wanted the ‘chicken and noodles’ from when I was a kid in Ohio. VH-1 is my enabler. They are the ones who feed my nostalgic addiction with their “I love the 80s” programming.

4. I make friends too easily… I don’t find this weird, but Scott and Phil insist that it is weird. Truth be told, I seem to have one of those faces, personalities, or something that make strangers on trains tell me their life’s story. Phil in particular thinks it’s weird that I identify my friends by saying things like, “You know, my math tutor friend, Marya”. But in my defense, if I like someone enough to call them my friend, I generally hang on to them for a lifetime. I have just accumulated a lot of friends now and I remember how I met them all. Plus, our realtor is really nice, I swear!

5. Road kill makes me cry sometimes… It turns out, according to the NEO-PI personality test that I took as an undergrad, I score quite high in the empathy category. I hope this will make me a good therapist when I graduate. But in the mean time, road kill makes me very sad. I must admit that I worry very much about how much pain the little critters experienced when they met their demise under someone’s screeching tires. As a result, one of my favorite books is ‘Apologia” by Barry Lopez. You should check it out from the library—it’s short, I promise.

6. Uninhibited, I’m really quite mean… Yes, whether it’s coming out of anesthesia, suddenly waking up from a deep sleep, or coming to from having passed out—I get quite mean. I have been told that I have yelled really awful things at people when I am incoherent, and once I slapped Emily really hard on the back when she woke me up in a not very nice way. I realize people who have met me as an adult may have a difficult time picturing me as mean, but when I was a teen and the least publicly inhibited, I was a super-duper meanie!

7. I like to rub the tops of hubby’s feet… The tops of his feet are softer than a baby’s butt, so I like to pet them.

8. I once spent three days folding toilet paper into points in the ladies room at work… When I traveled for work, I stayed in four- and five-star hotels all over the country. Since I was a frequent guest of the facilities, I was always amazed at how quickly the staff folded the toilet paper into points throughout the day. One day when I was back in the office I relayed my amusement to our administrative assistant. I started folding the toilet paper in the ladies room down the hall just to see how long it would take her to notice. It took three days. From time to time I still fold toilet paper into points in public restrooms just to give the person after me a good laugh (or at least a head scratcher).

9. I eat the same thing for a long time… Since I was a kid I have gone through food phases where I want to eat the same thing every day for months at a time. As a result, I have really overdone it on a few things. They include: butter, marshmallows, Cheetos, and eggs. Most recently I have gotten sick of the turkey sandwiches I ate for breakfast everyday, and I have switched over exclusively to non-wheat bagels with whipped cream cheese. I’m sure I’ll get sick of that soon enough. It took me a year and a half to get tired of the turkey sandwiches.

10. I self-pose for photos… Hey, I spent a really long time as a working photographer, so I know how I look best and I don’t trust other people to get it right. Especially at the DMV. I looked the very best in my second NH driver’s license. The secret is turning your body to a 45-degree angle and jutting your chin and face out the side. It sounds weird, but translates well on camera.

11. Super insomniac… It’s my mother’s fault. Three years ago I started having trouble sleeping. Scott keeps expecting to find me on the couch upside down watching CNN at 3:00 AM like my mother, but I’m doing this instead. I’m wicked tired; I wish I were sleeping right now!

12. I have a reputation at church for my shoes… I have a fantastic church-shoe collection! Everyone comments. Partially because they are stylish, but mainly because they are really tall stilettos. The reason—my legs are too short for my feet to touch the ground, so the tall shoes act as step stools. My mother calls them my Barbie shoes.

13. No one is the boss of me… Especially not Karin! Since I was a kid, no one has been the boss of me. If I said I didn’t want to do it, I wasn’t going to do it (or visa versa). My general problem with authority has not been helped by the fact that my dad was the boss of everyone at school the whole time I was there. It helped me when I had to work for execs, usually because I was one of the few who could relax around them, but it has been problematic in other areas. I am by nature a non-conformist. I even told that to the Army recruiter who called me years ago (he swore there was a place for me in the Army).

I break at least one rule no matter what I am doing. When I was in the corporate world, I would wear the suits, but the shoes were always a little too interesting (yes, I see the shoe theme here—the NEO-PI addressed that too). I have been known to wear baby blue fingernail polish to the Temple. I did my career in reverse—work first, school second. And as you can tell, I am breaking Karin’s rules by telling more than six weird things about myself, and refusing to tag anyone (partially because she and Emily already tagged my entire blogging community). Karin is not the boss of me!