So. Anyway. I digress.
I've been hideously remiss in collecting a couple of awards (been working so hard I have hardly seen my husband and child for his first week of holidays and if I don't pull my finger out, I won't see him for the last week of his holidays either), so much so that I have been awarded one of them twice (thank you Peta and Allie!). And to one of my newest regular blogs, though she's not posted an entry in a while *forlorn eyes*, a big thank you to Darnonymous :)
Nawwww, 'tis lovely to still be thought of in this world where (apparently) everyone has a blog nowdays (I remember a time when I think I was pretty much the only person in my circle who had one, back in 2005!) and mine just feels so old, so tired these days. Or... no wait, maybe that's me.
Now, what I have to do is the obligatory ten things you don't know (or shouldn't or, possibly, may do if you've ever heard me talk while I'm tipsy... or just in the mood for a chat, which, c'mon let's face it, has been quite often in my life). Yada-yada, we all know how this works by now, people.
So here goes:
> I have shocking circulation. I reckon my little toes are purple (or at least a blueish shade) for 360 days of the year. In the cooler months, my fingers are all different temperatures - as in, pinky could be luke warm, ring finger warmer, middle finger positively icy, index finger normal temp and thumb warm. And different on the other hand. For fun, when I notice it's happened and my fingers aren't consistent temperatures with each other, I always make Steve (and I have to make him) grip each finger to see for himself what a freak I am. And he always goes "EUGHH!!" about it, like he's just stepped in dog poo.
> I holidayed with my family each year in a place called Peterborough, which is about 30 minutes (well it is if you're in a bongo - or Combi or punch buggy - van laden down with 3 siblings, parents and the family dog) further down the Great Ocean Road from Port Campbell - another absolutely gorgeous spot - and an hour north/east from Warrnambool.
> One year, at Peterborough, I was old enough to walk to the shops - by myself with my lolly money in hand - from our camping spot, but apparently too young to buy bubble gum yet. It was a strict rule in our house. One of many. "No bubble gum or chewy"... I never did find out "'til when". Annnnyway, this one time, at family camp, I took myself to the general store and selected an ice cream with my money. As I exited the store, I took a furtive glance left and right, to make sure nobody from my family was around (there were times there when we all just did our own thing and just meandered back to the tent at meal times). The place was deserted... not unusual for Peterborough in the early 80's. So I headed for the beach so I could walk back hopefully undetected as I ate my loophole in peace: The Bubble-O-Bill. Someone had thought of the brilliant idea of putting a whopping great bubblegum ball as a nose on the head of a... was he a cowboy? An outlaw? A sherriff? Ack, I can't remember. Anywho, I ate the ice cream around the nose, savouring it and all it's sweet "but I bought an ice cream, how was I to know there was *shocked horror* bubblegum on it??" glory. And then, the worst thing to ever come my way in all my eight years happened. The nose, which was heavy on the fast melting ice cream, fell in the sand.
> I once ate a Bubble-O-Bill nose that was covered in sand after I rinsed it (badly) in the salty river I was walking alongside.
> I have a phobia/strong aversion to hearing saliva sounds while people are either eating or speaking. SHUDDDDDER. I cannot tell you just how much it freaks me out. Sometimes, over the years, Steve has caught me looking at him with a very pained expression on my face, and he's coined the question, "Is my microphone too close to my throat, Len?" because whenever it's happened on the tv, I've complained that the sound people "obviously don't know they've put that microphone down his throat, I can hear every little bloody trickle!!!" and run screaming from the room.
> An odd addendum to the above point would be that I can tolerate this food-saliva sounds thing in one person and one person ONLY on this green Earth: the LGBB. In fact, I delighted (somewhat obscenely, for mine) when I would hear her take those loooooong throw-back gulps each time my milk came in. She had a very distinct sound while she drank, I didn't hear it in other babies. How ironic that my child be born with a microphone so close to her throat. And more, that I don't even think twice about tolerating it.
> One of my favourite movies is Young Frankenstein. If you don't know it (or if you do and can't stand it), there is something you need to rectify. Immediately. G'awn, shoo! Down to Video Sleazy with you! For those of you still here, this was one of the favourite scenes of my high school BFF - we would often request the other to "hold out your bowl then" and other such ridiculous things. Pleeeeease, if you love me (or even like me a little bit), watch til the very last line. Understand my 'umour:
> If I am walking on a footpath, anywhere, I am most often found looking down at the ground searching out the most crunchy-looking leaves. And I step from crunchy to crunchier, like a five year-old. I have even been known to bump Steve off the path, such is my Labradorian mono-focus. I have to fight the urge when I'm walking with others and look ahead so I don't start getting mesmerised by the leaves. The deliciously curly dry crunchy... see? It consumes me even to write about it.
> This one time, I got a babysitting job (I was about 13 I think) for a night. I was asked to watch a baby and a little girl of about 5. Their parents were holding a party inside and outside of the house and I was asked to stay overnight as it would be a "very late one". I said "SURE!" and gleefully took on my young charges. Well.... I can't be sure but I think there was lots of alcohol (I was such a prude in my youth) and maybe even some weed. There were drunken people, although they were the loveliest, greenie-hippie crowd ever, all over the hillside and in the back rooms of the house. I was too scared to go to the toilet. And then, when I plucked up the courage to go, I discovered there wasn't one in the house!! It was an outhouse toily. Oh dear oh dear. So you know what I did? I held on. I bloody held on all night! They partied until daybreak and I snuck outside, around people lying asleep on the ground, around their bin fire, around an old abandoned car.... sounds like their toilet was in Detroit.... and when I got to the toilet, ohmyfkngod it was putrid. That smell and sight still makes my stomach churn today.
You see, they had (being the good hippies they were - and I loooove hippies, don't be thinkin' I'm dissin' hippies!) a dry toilet. Yup. A no-cistern, pour a bucket of water and be done with it, toilet. And let me tell yewes, nobody, but NOBODY had been doing the bucket thing all night by the looks of it.
I ran all the way home and I have to say, even at that young age, I was really quite alarmed at the ease with which my mother would allow me to just flit off for an overnighter, at the age of THIRTEEN!, with people she had nevvvver met before, and then ask me when I got home if I'd had "a nice time." Where the hell was her head at?
> Not unrelated to the previous, busting-to-go-toily story, I am the only person I know who has (or who has discovered they have) three ureters. Those little tubes that deliver urine from your kidneys to your bladder. Yuh! I have two on the left and one on the right. So if you ever thought there was something funny-looking about me..... that was probably it.
Now, look, I suck at passing on awards in time and now, every last one of the people whose blogs I read have got either one or the other of these by now (and please excuse me if you've awarded me something and I've never come to collect it.. I told you, I SUCK at that! But I do love the recognition, don't we all).
Before I go, there is one person I'm gonna offer the Honest Scrap award to (just to see if she joins the throng - heh-heh-heh, I'm so evil) and that is.... Like A Dump Truck, who I admire for her bravery and stamina. And ability to consume so many fatty treats and admit to them, although granted, not so often on her blog.
