8 Things

Look out, it's a meme! Feel free, if you are so moved...8 random things about yourself.

1. I am afraid of spiders (although I've gotten much better about it over the years). In the house I kill them on sight, with much associated shrieking and drama. But outside I find them fascinating. We have one in our garden right now, big-bodied with stripey legs. Every night she builds a beautiful web. I love to watch the construction. It takes an hour and a half at least to complete it, and I am amazed, from a biologist's point of view, at how much energy is expended in the process. I also love watching her body tense up when a bug is caught in the strands. She waits for a few moments for it to become thoroughly ensnared before rapidly catching and wrapping it and bringing it back to the center of the web, leaving big holes in her painstakingly constructed trap.

2. I don't care for it when couples write their own vows. No offense if you wrote your own. I find that they are occasionally good. Maybe one out of five of them are beautiful and touching and the right balance of promise and personal. Yours was probably one of those weddings. But I think that generally, they are long on sap and short on vow. At your wedding you are taking vows, not making an oral recitation of bad Hallmark poetry. What is wrong with the traditional ones? It's pretty hard to beat "I take you...to love and to cherish...for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health..."

3. I'm not very ticklish (except when David tickles me, but that's a whole other kind of post). I actually LIKE to have my feet tickled. But a few years ago I discovered that I do have a terribly, excruciatingly ticklish spot: my gums. I tried one of those Sonicare toothbrushes, and I could barely keep it in my mouth. I kept dissolving into a puddle of hysterical laughter on the floor. So I still use an old fashioned, manually operated toothbrush.

4. I don't like war movies. I never saw Saving Private Ryan. I used to think it was weird of me, but now I don't really care. There are so many things I would rather do than spend two hours watching people shoot each other and be miserable in ditches. War sucks. I know that. I don't have to watch it in order to see a touching story about camaraderie, or about devotion to a cause.

5. I love tearing perforated things. Like coupons. I never use them. (I try on occasion, and the coupons sit in a sad stack on the kitchen counter while I make an unplanned stop to buy the coupon-items, and finding them left behind, I pay full price, justifying it with the thought that it's only fifty cents here and a dollar there, and it would cost more in gas to make a special trip to the store than I would be saving by having the coupons with me.) But I still like to tear them out. When I was little I would go through the ad inserts in the Sunday paper and tear out the coupons, carefully folding them back and forth so that they would make that delicious sound when they tore neatly from the page. And then I would throw the neat stack of coupons away.

6. I am particular about manners. Not in the Emily Post sort of way. Burp, fart, whatever, it doesn't really bother me. The body has to function. No, the manners I'm thinking of are more related to common human decency. I think it is terrible manners to leave your shopping cart sitting in a parking space rather than returning it to the cart return. It's bad manners to intentionally not let another car in front of yours. It's bad manners to leave your table messy at a restaurant or cafe where they have a place for trays on the top of the trash can and obviously want you to bus your own table. It's incredibly bad manners to be rude to service people. Etc., etc.

7. I let the litter box go much longer than I should without scooping it way too often. Our cat isn't that picky, so I don't have the "surprise in the corner" to motivate me to scoop the box every day. It's possible that I will be a terrible mother.

8. I think waaaay too hard about these sorts of lists. That's why doing this "8 things" seems much more achievable than the "100 things" lists that so many of you do. I am in awe of your ability to churn out that many little facts. I just can't do it. I've been working on this list for over a week already.