From Me To You

Okay, I've been "awarded" the opportunity to share 7 things about myself with all of you. Bear with me and I'll try to make them interesting.

1. I love to schedule. Whether planning a trip itinerary, making goals for the year, or putting together a class schedule, I love to block out the sections of time, the activities, and get the details arranged so that everything comes together like a puzzle. It has to be the most efficient, cost-effective, smallest span of time imaginable. Family vacation? Done! My daughter's college schedule? Done! Heck, I've already taken care of her next four years. Crazy, huh? If you only knew how long it took to organize all those details in the perfect precise order, though.

2. I am a hermit. I work alone. I don't like to leave home unless absolutely necessary. I return calls, but hardly ever call anyone myself. I love silence. And I like it that way. Blame it on my past, dealing with disgruntled parents (at work, not my parents), disgruntled customers, previous jobs as an operator, kids kids kids, and relying on others only to have things fall through. This doesn't make me unsociable. I could hang out in a Starbucks anyday and be happy, but I'd be sipping hot cocoa in the quietest corner with my laptop.

3. I whistle while I work. Maybe that makes me a dwarf, I don't know, but I've had decades of practice and am REALLY good mimicking songs. It's one of the first things my husband noticed about me. He came from another room to see who was whistling Oingo Boingo without missing a note. Yep, I can hold a note while breathing in or out. I do classical, instrumentals, pop/rock, anything I've heard really. My favorite? The saxophone solo in Foreigner's "Urgent".

4. Don't even ask for any of my colored candies! You'll mess up my system. Candies like Skittles, M&Ms, Smarties, etc. have to be eaten by twos. You take two of the same colored candies and pop them in your mouth at the same time. And then you eat two more until you're done with that color, so the flavors don't get messed up in your mouth. You finish one color, you move on to the next. And if there are odd numbers, you eat them in pairs at the end. One left over? Get another handful.

5. I start out sleeping on my side, end up on my stomach. Unless I have a cold. Then I end up on my back snoring with a dry throat.

6. I have a mild form of Reynaud's disease, which means my body reacts to cold like yours does to snakes: all the blood in my extremities shoots the wrong way on contact. Okay, not exactly, but I do wear socks continuously (sometimes socks with my slippers), can't slice up one half-thawed chicken breast without needing to scald my hands back to life, get shivery from a ceiling fan, and never completely disrobe. No, I lied about that last part. How would I ever take a shower, people? I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.

7. One word: Bellydancing. Just started. And, no, this is NOT like stripping. Clean up your minds. But it is fun to wear my jingley hip scarf while I sweep the kitchen. Maybe if I could hear it over the vaccuum, I'd do more of that. Yeah, right.

Feel free to post your own 7 Interesting Things.