Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Aggravation and Amusement
Funny story from Saturday when I had taken Ant to the mall to get him some new shoes. We came out, and I put him in the car and turned his music on while I was putting the bags and stroller in the trunk. When I finally got in to turn the car on, it wouldn't start!!! This little symbol was flashing on the dash, a steering wheel with a lock on it. I pulled out the instruction manual yet again (had a flat tire the week before, which also displayed an icon that meant nothing to me), and it said that it was a jammed steering wheel, to turn it to the side to unlock it, then start the car. I did that to no avail. So then I called the service folks, and the woman I spoke to said to move the wheel from side to side. This was on the bluetooth, so Ant could hear the conversation. I grimaced, "The steering wheel is really hard to turn!", as I kept trying. Ant started chatting away in the back seat "Hahd to tuhn. Hahd to tuhn. Seering wheel is hahd to tuhn!". The lady on the phone thought that was really amusing (and remarked that she was impressed by his enunciation), as did I. That didn't work either, so she had to tell me to call roadside assistance. When we hung up, Ant said with no prompting, "Bye Mary", which was her name, and which I had already forgotten. Before I called the assistance people I decided to try one more thing - it was close to lunch time, and I SO did not want to have to wait for them for an hour! So I put the car in neutral, took off the parking brake, and pushed the car myself using the door jamb. Meanwhile Ant was announcing "Mommy pushing cah! Mommy pushing cah." Fortunately, that seemed to do the trick and I was able to start the silly thing. That's three warning lights in the space of two weeks though, I'm starting to get nervous to drive it!
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Me so quirky!
Ova Girl wrote a brilliant post describing six quirky things about her. I have way too much time on my hands (NOT), so I signed up to continue the meme. I had fun trying to come up with six interesting / different / wacky things about myself - it took me a while. Because I'm really just so normal. Titter.
1. The quirkiest thing about me, although it's not a personality quirk, is that I hiccup. Not your average run of the mill bout of hiccups every once in a while; I have hiccupped every day since sophomore year of high school. I have just passed the 19 year mark (egads!) It's not constant by any means, at this point it's probably on the order of a dozen times a day, but it's completely random, and usually only 1-3 hiccups at a time. When they first started it was hundreds of times a day (yes, I did count), but they've slowed down to quite a manageable clip now. Quite a conversation piece, let me tell you!
2. I was born in South Africa, moved to the States when I was ten. Which, unfortunately, was too young to keep my accent. I have a pretty vanilla American accent now. But there are a few words that I have real trouble with pronouncing the American way, with really no rhyme or reason. They are (in no particular order): garage, water, and herb. The latter, of course, I pronounce the way it's supposed to be pronounced, with an H sound at the beginning. There are no "erbs" anywhere near my house! ;-)
3. I really cannot stand having the sheets on my bed tucked in. I don't exactly feel claustrophobic, but I like to really snuggle into my bed, and with the sheets tucked in on the sides, one just can't do that! Anytime I go to a hotel, one of the first things I do is pull the sheets out of the sides.
4. Excel files. Data. I'm a fanatic! I don't just make lists in Excel, I make files that do all kinds of calculations for me. Sometimes I even write macros to make things easier. I have a file that calculates my weight gain while pg (and compares this time to last - so far exactly the same, strangely enough). I have one that has all my friends' due dates in it, and updates to show how many weeks they are any time I open it. When I was tracking Ant's words, my Excel file computed the new words added each month, previously suspected words that were now confirmed, total words, and number of words starting with each letter. I admit it, I'm a total geek!
5. I really hate wasting paper towels. It seems like such a silly thing to use a disposable wipe for things where a re-usable one will do. To that end I now have four sponges next to my sink - one for cleaning Ant's dishes with (so it doesn't ever touch things that might get him sick), one for our dishes, one for counters, and one for the floors. And yet somehow I still feel like we go through paper towels at an inordinate rate. Perhaps I should institute a paper towel sign-out sheet. Only partially kidding!
6. Consistent grammar / spelling mistakes drive me nuts (not typos, those happen to everyone, yours truly included). I really have to reel myself in from commenting about them (not on blogs, but RL). "Your" when "you're" is what is intended. "It's" instead of "its" or vice versa (although I must admit, I do catch myself with that one from time to time). I/Me. A few I've recently come across on some of the message boards I frequent - "vile" instead of "vial", and "nauteous" instead of "nauseous" are more common that I ever would have imagined. I read those and have to tell myself, "down, girl, down!"
So those are six quirky things about me. I'm becoming all full of angst about choosing six other people to tag for this task; and don't feel quite right stealing OG's method of tagging the first six commenters (plus, honestly, I don't want to discourage anyone!), so I'm just going to leave it at this - if you haven't already done this exercise and feel like taking some time for a bit of self reflection, leave a note in a comment, and I'll link to your entry. I'd love to read it!
And re-reading this post, I have to add another quirk; I have a very very hard time ending a paragraph without an exclamation point. I must EM-PHA-SIZE my excitement! Sign of a poor writer, I know, but I just can't help it. (I even wanted to put one there, but had to stop myself.)
1. The quirkiest thing about me, although it's not a personality quirk, is that I hiccup. Not your average run of the mill bout of hiccups every once in a while; I have hiccupped every day since sophomore year of high school. I have just passed the 19 year mark (egads!) It's not constant by any means, at this point it's probably on the order of a dozen times a day, but it's completely random, and usually only 1-3 hiccups at a time. When they first started it was hundreds of times a day (yes, I did count), but they've slowed down to quite a manageable clip now. Quite a conversation piece, let me tell you!
2. I was born in South Africa, moved to the States when I was ten. Which, unfortunately, was too young to keep my accent. I have a pretty vanilla American accent now. But there are a few words that I have real trouble with pronouncing the American way, with really no rhyme or reason. They are (in no particular order): garage, water, and herb. The latter, of course, I pronounce the way it's supposed to be pronounced, with an H sound at the beginning. There are no "erbs" anywhere near my house! ;-)
3. I really cannot stand having the sheets on my bed tucked in. I don't exactly feel claustrophobic, but I like to really snuggle into my bed, and with the sheets tucked in on the sides, one just can't do that! Anytime I go to a hotel, one of the first things I do is pull the sheets out of the sides.
4. Excel files. Data. I'm a fanatic! I don't just make lists in Excel, I make files that do all kinds of calculations for me. Sometimes I even write macros to make things easier. I have a file that calculates my weight gain while pg (and compares this time to last - so far exactly the same, strangely enough). I have one that has all my friends' due dates in it, and updates to show how many weeks they are any time I open it. When I was tracking Ant's words, my Excel file computed the new words added each month, previously suspected words that were now confirmed, total words, and number of words starting with each letter. I admit it, I'm a total geek!
5. I really hate wasting paper towels. It seems like such a silly thing to use a disposable wipe for things where a re-usable one will do. To that end I now have four sponges next to my sink - one for cleaning Ant's dishes with (so it doesn't ever touch things that might get him sick), one for our dishes, one for counters, and one for the floors. And yet somehow I still feel like we go through paper towels at an inordinate rate. Perhaps I should institute a paper towel sign-out sheet. Only partially kidding!
6. Consistent grammar / spelling mistakes drive me nuts (not typos, those happen to everyone, yours truly included). I really have to reel myself in from commenting about them (not on blogs, but RL). "Your" when "you're" is what is intended. "It's" instead of "its" or vice versa (although I must admit, I do catch myself with that one from time to time). I/Me. A few I've recently come across on some of the message boards I frequent - "vile" instead of "vial", and "nauteous" instead of "nauseous" are more common that I ever would have imagined. I read those and have to tell myself, "down, girl, down!"
So those are six quirky things about me. I'm becoming all full of angst about choosing six other people to tag for this task; and don't feel quite right stealing OG's method of tagging the first six commenters (plus, honestly, I don't want to discourage anyone!), so I'm just going to leave it at this - if you haven't already done this exercise and feel like taking some time for a bit of self reflection, leave a note in a comment, and I'll link to your entry. I'd love to read it!
And re-reading this post, I have to add another quirk; I have a very very hard time ending a paragraph without an exclamation point. I must EM-PHA-SIZE my excitement! Sign of a poor writer, I know, but I just can't help it. (I even wanted to put one there, but had to stop myself.)
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