Wanted: Crazy, quirky confessions

The cover of the May 2010 Reader's Digest beckoned me: "Normal or Nuts?" it screamed. "Your habits, quirks, and fears explained." I immediately had to read the article because I think I have a lot of weird habits, quirks and fears and I hoped the article would prove there are folks with far weirder habits, quirks and fears than mine.

Unfortunately, it didn't. Despite the intro comment that "... it's a sure bet that your nutty quirk -- the one you think is freakishly unusual -- is shared by plenty of other people ...", the habits highlighted by the readers were pretty darn normal, if you ask me. There was fear of speaking in public, flying in an airplane, loving one child more than another, talking to oneself, being depressed about layoffs at work, blah, blah, boring blah.

Okay, yeah, there were two truly weird obsessions highlighted in the article: One in which the person didn't like to have his or her feet touch the ground ... except for when they're in motion; and another in which the person pulls out stray arm hairs to ensure all the arm hair is the same length. Yep, those two are weird.

But I was hoping for some enlightenment, actually, hoping for some companionship when it comes to the quirks that make me feel like I'm crazy. Comments from my daughters such as as "You're so weird, Mom" are a regular occurrence, and after years of trying to fit in, I've come to accept that I don't really fit in much of anywhere in any way. I follow the beat of a different drummer, a lone drummer, one that plays a song not many understand. Or so I think. But maybe I'm wrong.

Which is why I'm coming to you all. Because Reader's Digest couldn't help me out, I'm hoping you can. I'd like to propose that today we all fess up to one or two of our quirkiest quirks, our craziest thoughts, words and deeds that we think we're alone in conducting. Then we'll see what the consensus is. Are we all weird? Are we all crazy? Or are we just quirky enough to be charming ... and interesting.

So I'll go first. Then I'd like you all to comment with something that similarly worrisome to you, that you think you may be the only one in the world doing. Nothing too dark, nothing too revealing, nothing so bat-crap crazy that I block you from commenting ever again ... just something that you wonder if others do as well -- or if others think that's just too far outside the spectrum of normal human behavior.

We'll comment back and forth and together we'll see what happens. Who knows? Could be crazy, could be quirky, could be an utterly idiotic thing to ask of my readers. We'll see ...

So here I go with mine:

I absolutely must cover my neck with the covers in bed each night, regardless of how hot the weather may be. If my neck is exposed, I fear a vampire will claim the fleshy space between my head and my body. It has nothing to do with Twilight or True Blood; it goes farther back than that. I've done it since I was a kid ... a kid who grew up unable to take my eyes off the TV when Barnabas Collins had his way with the women and more in the original serial called Dark Shadows. The show was kind of sexy (to a kid, at least), definitely scary ... and obviously quite scarring, as you can tell by my neck-covering obsession more than 40 years later!

Now you tell me: crazy or quirky? And, what crazy or quirky confession do you have to share so we can all weigh in on your obsession?

Today's question:

See above ...!

**Oh my! In researching to verify what year Dark Shadows ran on ABC, I found on Wikipedia that Johnny Depp will play Barnabas Collins in the 2011 movie from Tim Burton. Aack! The neck-covering continues!

Getting comfortable

Some of you may find this hard to believe, considering how much I babble on this blog, but I was excruciatingly timid for the first 20 or so years of my life. I was scared of many things, but most importantly I was scared of other people because in my mind they were bigger, better, smarter, sweeter and certainly better looking than I would ever be.

But then I had kids. And I had no choice but to play Mama Bear. I had to go against my natural instincts and be brave, strong and protective -- for the sake of my daughters. And I got pretty good at defending my family.

Then I became an editor and had to ramp up the courage another notch or two. I had to be brave, strong and protective -- for the sake of my staff. I got pretty good at that, too. (Of course, I couldn't save our department from being cut, but that's another story.)

Because of my role as mom and my role as editor, I learned to not care too much what others thought of me. But in the last two weeks, I've had two experiences that point out that in my current role of grandma I've finally aged enough, evolved enough that I truly am comfortable with who I am, regardless of what others may think of me.

The first involved the Roto-Rooter man. Sounds like this could lead somewhere disgusting, but stay with me ... it doesn't. You see, we have lots of trees on our property, lots of roots clogging up our plumbing system and lots of backups that flooded our basement in the few years we've lived here. So this year I decided to be proactive and have the Roto-Rooter-type guy clean out our system before the backup could happen. Well, turns out the hole for him to work on such things is right below the tree where the mourning doves have returned to nest and hatch their babies. So once the cleaning was done, I pointed out to the guy the mama bird who had sat above his head the entire time. He apparently wasn't much for birding and didn't know what the mourning dove was. So I told him. "They're the birds that do this ..." and I proceeded to do the mourning dove call: "ooh AH hoo hoo hoo." Ten, even five years ago I would never have done such a thing, would have been mortified if such an embarrassing sound escaped on its own, much less vocalize it on purpose. The guy glanced at me sideways and mumbled "Oh, I think I know which one you're talking about," and left it at that. I know he thought I was a nut, but I didn't care. At all. And I realize in retrospect what a giant leap that was for me.

An even bigger leap came this past week. Because we have all those trees I mentioned, when hurricane-strength winds (no exaggeration!) hit town a few days ago, one of those trees broke ... right over the neighbor's fence. So we had to call our trusty tree service dude to make the final cut that would save the fence and save us from our wacky neighbor who still carries the bullet in his head from a stint in Iraq. (A sad, sad story, but again, one for another time.)

Before I go any further, let me say that I have really, really, really dark circles under my eyes. (Stay with me; it comes into play.) They're not bags, just circles, gifted to me by my dad. And I hate them. And I never, ever, ever allow anyone to see me without at least some cover-up under the eyes. When the girls had friends stay the night, I'd get up early to shower and slap on some makeup before the kids awoke. Same goes for when relatives would visit. Even when I was in the hospital for a fairly lengthy visit, I made sure I had my cover-up and a mirror for applying it as I lay in the bed. My dark circles were my dark secret.

But now that I'm older and wiser -- and a grandma -- it seems I don't give a cuss about circles anymore, dark, light or otherwise. For when the tree guy -- who has been to our house several times, all for which I was fully prepared and fully covered -- came to fully amputate our tree, I met him at the door fresh from my morning walk with the dogs, smelling I'm sure not so fresh in my sweaty T-shirt, shorts and ponytail ... and no makeup. Not a speck, not a drop. And I hadn't even considered racing to the bathroom to swipe the cover-up stick under my eyes before his arrival. Because I no longer care.

That, my friends, may be one small step for most women but an unbelievably huge leap for this grandma. Trust me on this.

I make weird bird noises. I have dark circles under my eyes. I am no longer timid. I am no longer afraid of what others think of me.

I am grandma. And I am comfortable with that.

Today's question:

What have you become more comfortable with as you've gotten older?

Wheat, chaff and baby teeth

As I mentioned yesterday, Jim and I spent Saturday with three of Jim's five siblings plus a couple nieces and nephews clearing out the storage shed that held everything from the last apartment Jim's mom lived in, her last home and the place she resided when a stroke unexpectedly ripped her from her life and plopped her down in a hospital bed to wait out her days.

My mother-in-law was always a fastidious housekeeper, a truly tidy grandma. But the unexpectedness of the emergency medical situation meant she never had the chance to tie up her life belongings into beribboned bundles or to even discard such things as drawers full of hair-color conditioner tubes and expired grocery coupons. Which meant her kids had a lot of stuff to go through, a lot of work to do paring her possessions into piles to pass along to her children and grandchildren, honoring her by not pitching it all into the charity bin.

To be honest, it was a relatively quick task as Jim's mom lived a spare and simple life. And, as Granny prided herself on being ever the educator, the task indeed taught me a few lessons about getting my own things and my own life in order so my kids and grandkids have an easier time separating the wheat from the chaff once I'm gone.

Here are a few of those lessons:

Keep a notebook or journal -- placed in a prominent spot -- detailing which possessions you'd like to go to whom. There were thankfully no arguments over my mother-in-law's goods, but we all could only guess what her desire may be ... and I'm pretty sure we missed the mark on at least a few. A will may be the answer, but how many wills go so far as to say which kid gets the red afghan versus the white or the flowered teapot versus the striped?

Always label photos with the names of those in the pictures and the date. As we perused the hundreds of photos, we were at a loss again and again without Granny around to let us know which baby belonged to whom and why one wacky woman wore the getup featuring what appeared appeared to be a bikini-clad sumo wrestler.

Minimize the mementos from your children's early years. Mother's Day gifts made in preschool, unidentifiable art-class and woodshop projects and every scrap of sentimentality have their place, but it's a very limited place. Save only those that really tug at the heart strings, not every crayon-scribbled, glitter-pocked piece of paper.

Speaking of paper, get rid of (most of) it. There's no need to save every single greeting card, every single receipt, every single recipe that one may have intended to try but never did. A paper shredder -- of which we found an unused one in Granny's possession -- comes in handy for such things.

Same goes for toiletry samples and hotel freebies. As Jim and his siblings chuckled about the blue tube after blue tube of the Clairol conditioning cream that comes with the hair color but is far too much for any normal woman to use as directed on the tube, I had to fess up that I have a handful, okay a basketful, of the very same conditioning cream tubes in my own bathroom cabinet. I'll be pitching those ... soon.

Thank you for these lessons and more, Granny. I'll do my best to soon institute them in my life, my home, my piles of stuff. I'll do it in honor of you -- and to nip in the bud the giggles, grins and guffaws sure to come from my daughters if they were to one day discover the Ziploc baggie I have filled with baby teeth individually wrapped in tissues, all deftly pulled from under pillows by this grandma formerly known as the Tooth Fairy.

Today's question:

Which of the "lessons" from above are you most in need of instituting in your life?

Flushing Grandma's potty mouth

I don't swear a lot, but I do swear. Probably more often than I should. Most often of the H-word, S-word, D-word variety.

I never ever use GD, and the F-word only flies in my head ... when I stub my toe, poke my eye with the mascara brush or get really, really, REALLY angry at Jim. But like I said, it's only in my head.

I do try not to swear around Bubby at all, but I'm thinking that I should probably just clean up my language a tad so I don't have to consciously consider what's coming out of my mouth when around him. Yeah, he's 819 miles away, but eventually I'll have grandkids nearby that I see more often and being a potty-mouthed grandma isn't what I aspire to be.

So I've decided I'm going to follow the lead of George Clooney ... as Fantastic Mr. Fox. He cusses all the time ... but he uses the actual word CUSS in place of the cuss words. Take a look:

How cussing cool is that!? I think I even picked up on an F-word replacement here and there. Which means I can actually tell Jim what I'm thinking at those times I'm really, really, REALLY angry and I'll still be a relatively clean-mouthed grandma!

So if I start using the "cuss" word around here, you'll understand, right?

Oh, and if you've not seen "Fantastic Mr. Fox," what the cuss are you waiting for?

Today's question:

What cuss word do you say most often?

My answer: The one most often flying from my mouth is the H-word ... and it's not when I'm reading the Bible.

How I compute: then and now

My computer has become a sinking ship and this week I started frantically trying to rescue what I could from it before it's totally sunk. The lifeboat in which I'm transferring my bits and bytes: a laptop, my first laptop ever.

I purchased my now-dying desktop in 2004. It's been a good six years, with lots and lots and LOTS of changes, not only in computing but in my life. Those changes are evident in the way I spend my time on the computer, then versus now.

Then

Here's how I spent most of my computer time in 2004:

• Reading parenting, entertainment and news articles.

• Writing parenting articles ... for print publications.

• Keeping tabs on my middle and youngest daughters who were 539 miles away at college, via MySpace, chatting and e-mail.

• Regularly accessing the Occupational Outlook Handbook to help my youngest daughter figure out what degree/career to pursue.

• Playing computer games: Mahjong, You Don't Know Jack, Wheel of Fortune.

Now

Here's how I now spend most of my time on the computer:

• Blogging about my grandson.

• Researching ways to improve the blogging about my grandson.

• Reading other blogs -- 52 subscriptions in my RSS Reader.

• Looking for work, freelance or otherwise.

• Wasting timePromoting my blog on Facebook and now Twitter.

Good thing my shiny new laptop has a pretty darn good graphics card because by the looks of this comparison, I've become blog-obsessed, boring and in need of a game or two.

Or maybe, just maybe, what I really need is to step away from the computer and appreciate the aspects of my life not measured in bits, bytes and Google page ranks.

Which I'll definitely do -- after I get my shiny new laptop all set up and ready for blogging.

Today's question:

How do you spend the majority of your time on the computer?