7 Random Things

Well, I was tagged for this meme by two different people on the same day, so I guess I’d better do it!  Thank you, Michelle Johnson and ThespAc for sending it my way.

The rules are as follows:

Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.  Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.  Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.  Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

And here are my seven (I had fun deciding what to share!):

1. I talk to myself. No, really. When I’m getting ready for a presentation, or even just a conversation that I know I’m going to have with someone, I rehearse it in my head. More often than I’d like to admit, it makes its way out of my head and I eventually realize that I’m saying my parts out loud. And yes, I do respond at the appropriate times to what the other person is/people are “saying.” It’s most embarrassing when I suddenly realize that I’m doing it when other people are around (while walking down the street, etc.) I haven’t quite mastered the I’m-talking-on-a-cell-phone-couldn’t-you-tell stance.

2. I once jumped off a bridge because everyone else was doing it. Really.

3. When I was a kid I once tried to stuff one of our cats into my backpack when I had to walk somewhere, in order to take her with me and keep her safe: she was following me, and I was worried she’d get run over or lost. Didn’t work. Couldn’t get the damn cat in the bag. She stopped following me though.

4. Books are my greatest downfall. Checking them out from the library isn’t good enough – I need to OWN them. The rate at which I acquire books far exceeds my rate of reading them, and though I always claim that I’ll read them all someday, secretly I know I never will. I just love that I have them, and that I could read them all. Books are like food, only better. And I also secretly love the way they smell. Especially brand new ones. Eric’s caught me smelling books at the bookstore at least once, though he may or may not remember. I think I pretended that I was just examining something interesting on the cover very closely.

5. I had a cat who disappeared when I was in eighth grade… and then came back to visit one day seven years later when I happened to be home for a week from college. Seriously. (Turns out she’d been mistaken for a stray and taken in by a family who lived a couple of streets over, and that day she and their puppy escaped together through a door that was left open and ended up in our back yard. We noticed the puppy first, and then when I went out to check its collar to see where it belonged Ebony emerged from the bushes and we had a lovely little reunion. We pieced the full story together later when she and the puppy were collected by their family.)

6. I am stupidly proud of the vast collection of camp songs and chants and rounds that I know, and am quite sad that I never find an appropriate occasion to show off my prowess. Some months ago I actually made a list of all the ones I could think of, and between songs that I learned at summer camp and youth conferences (and, ok, a few more in the intervening years), I came up with a list of 86 songs. No joke. For any of you who ever happen to meet me, don’t ask me about this unless you actually me to break out into enthusiastic song, because I’ll jump at the chance. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

7. I used to experience sleep paralysis quite often. I’d wake up all of a sudden but couldn’t move at all, for what seemed like an eternity but probably was only several seconds. I’d strain to move just one finger, or my eyes, or to scream – sometimes I could manage as much as a muffled squeak. Then suddenly I’d snap out of it, and I’d jump up, turn the lights on (when I was alone in the room – it happened a couple of times when I was in a hotel room with my family, and at least several times after I was in college and had a roommate) and spend the next couple of hours trying to push down the terror that gripped me every time it happened, even after it had become common enough that I knew I wasn’t really in any danger. It’s pretty much the exact opposite of sleep walking, I think – I’d wake up enough to be conscious, but whatever it is that keeps our muscles from moving when we’re dreaming hadn’t let go yet. Sometimes it would happen as I was waking up from a dream, and it would get all mixed up with the dream itself – the first time it ever happened I was about thirteen and I’d dreamt that there were two beings hovering above me in my room, and I just knew that they were planning to take me away… and then I was awake but I couldn’t move and I couldn’t call for help. Yeah, kind of scary, right? I never told my parents about it, for some reason. I guess I never thought it was something they could help with, so I didn’t want to bother them with it. I finally realized, years later, that it only seemed to happen when I’d been sleeping on my back, so I trained myself to sleep only on my side or my stomach and it stopped. It’s only happened once in the last ten years or so, and sure enough I was on my back when I woke up.

So there it is, all laid out for you to see.  And now I suppose I’ve got to find seven new people to tag.  Um.  Hey, if I tag you and you don’t want to do a silly meme, don’t worry about it.  No pressure.  So with that disclaimer, here goes:

1. She
2. Kota Bear
3. Maria Cristina
4. Lawyerish
5. Bone
6. Fledgling Poet
7. Crafty Green Poet