33 truths

Happy Friday! The sun is shining, the sky is the kind of endless blue you can get lost in, all the possibilities of the weekend stretched out before me, seems like a good time to play “Get to know the Mermaid better.” And I picked 33 truths because that is how old I am. I’d love to know some truths about you.

In no particular order of importance:

1. I love ketchup. I often plan “ketchup dinners”, which is where the main ingredient is picked for its ketchup-ability, usually homemade french fries. When I was growing up, and my mom made dinners with meat (which I’ve never liked – red meat, ham, chicken, never been crazy about any of it), I would smother it with ketchup, the only way I could manage to eat it. In fact, I think tonight might be a ketchup dinner night – Five Guys french fries, I think.
2. I have completed a bike century – just over 100 miles in one fell swoop. It was really hard, and I wasn’t really properly trained for it, and I am very proud of the fact that I managed to complete it.
3. I’ve met Steven Tyler of Aerosmith a few times, he lives in my hometown. He’s very nice, and very down-to-earth, but he did hit me with a door once. He felt badly about it, though.
4. I’ve walked into a news studio. Like head on CRASH into the glass wall of the studio. While they were on the air. I could see them trying not to laugh.
5. I’m an only child (which I love), but I have LOTS and LOTS of identical twins. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stopped by strangers who mistake me for someone else. But not just mistake me for someone else – they start having conversations with me about things we’ve done. They don’t always believe me when I say I am not in fact the person they think I am.
6. I talk to myself ALL THE TIME. I’m not always aware that I’m doing it.
7. I also talk to inanimate objects, and everything is given a personality and likes/dislikes.
8. I married my first boyfriend, after about 10 years of not seeing each other at all. He is perfect for me in just about every way 🙂
9. I love to read, but I don’t often read sequentially. I hate suspense and not knowing what is going to happen, so I almost always get to a point where I NEED to know what happens. So I skip ahead and read the last page or two. But then I need to know what happened to get there, so I’ll go back a few pages or a chapter and read forward again. Then I’ll go back to where I was originally, but then I’ll jump back earlier in the story to reread bits I liked. I read fairly quickly but it can take me a while to get all the way through the back cover to cover because of how I read.
10. My dislike of suspense/needing to know how things turn out plays out in other areas as well. The first time I see a movie, even if Husband is also seeing the movie for the first time, I will ask him what is happening, or what they are doing, even though he doesn’t know yet either. And yet, he remains married to me. 🙂
11. I often have several books going on at once – one in the downstairs bathroom, one in the living room, one in the bedroom, one in the upstairs bathroom. It’s only when I’m really engrossed in a book that I will read it without reading anything else, and then I pretty much won’t put it down – I’ll read while cooking, while getting dressed, while brushing my teeth.
12. My name means Graceful Warrior.
13. I HATE HATE HATE onions, but I love garlic.
14. Being a redhead is as much a part of my identity as my name – I can’t imagine NOT being a redhead. I often say I want to form a RedHead Civil Liberties Union, and to end the blasphemous campaign about how Blondes Have More Fun. I’m only mostly joking.
15. I love double numbers.
16. The only phrase I know in Dutch means, Caution: Speedbumps. I hope to one day have to use that phrase.
17. When I was traveling in Ireland, I often had people ask me for directions, I guess because I look like a local? Oddly, I didn’t see as many redheads there as I expected.
18. I don’t stand still well. I jump around, I dance, I do part of tree pose from yoga, I stand on my tiptoes, or start walking around on my heels.
19. I am a horrible singer. I am completely, and utterly tone deaf. But I sing all the time, especially to my dog, Myra WonderPup. But I also sing to the inanimate objects that I am always talking to.
20. If I start counting out loud, I usually do one of two things: I count like The Count from Sesame Street (1 egg, ah, ah, ah!) or I count up to 12 like in the Sesame Street song, the one that ends twel-el-el-elve
21. I haven’t eaten red meat or ham since 1995.
22. I started scuba diving when I was 14. I don’t do it much and I miss it.
23. If it is windy out, I will put out my arms and fly. I saw someone else doing this one time, I was waiting on the sidewalk and saw him flying. When he walked past me, I commented how it was a great day for flying. He looked confused for a moment, and I explained how I saw him with his arms out in the wind, and he just grinned.
24. I believe in fairies and mermaids. Yes, really. I wave to mermaids and say hi whenever I go by any big body of water. I talk to fairies when I am out on trail runs. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t real. There is a reason they show up in mythology from all over the world. But aliens freak me out, even though I admit is is likely that they exist.
25. I still have my bear that I slept with when I was a baby. His name is Ted. He is just as much alive as I am, and I have conversations with him. He traveled with me to France, when I lived there for a year, although I didn’t take him when I backpacked through Ireland, because he would have been squished for two months. I will sleep hugging him when Husband is out of town.
26. I have been known to sleepwalk. One time, I almost walked out of my parents’ house, and another time, I locked myself out of my freshmen dorm in college and had to get security to let me back into my room.
27. I have never been drunk, I have a really low tolerance for alcohol, and as soon as I start to feel even the slightest bit of a buzz (less than half a glass), I am so afraid of losing control that I pretty much stop drinking entirely. And yet I will happily do most of the silly things that people usually need alcohol for, but I’m sober.
28. I am a big sap. I cry at commercials, and love songs, and sad songs, and books, and movies
29. I believe Fourth of July celebrations are really just a way to announce to the world that my birthday is coming up four days later.
30. I am so ninja, you can’t even see me. I often enter a room by sneaking around corners with my finger gun, while humming the Mission Impossible music.
31. I can quote the ENTIRE Princess Bride movie. And do. I am probably not a good person to watch it with because of that reason.
32. One of my biggest, and best, jobs in life is to be a cheerleader. I ALWAYS look for ways to encourage people, to cheer them on, to let them know I believe in them.
33. I believe things are always getting better, and I am loving my life more and more all the time.

Congrats on making it through this list of my weirdness and randomness!