Six or seven things I know about her...

[flemmings]

tammylee tagged me.

1. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
2. Tag seven people to do the same.
3. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag whoever wants to do it.

Re 3: IOW shove that meme down people's throats!!! Hnh. The Huns are at the gate.

1. I have a very sensitive sense of smell that seems only to have grown more hair-trigger in the last ten years, contrary to common wisdom. Truly, 25 years back I didn't regularly walk into work and say 'OK, who has the poo?' Now I do, and find it (or frequently, them) and change it, while everyone else says 'I don't smell anything.' SoS is the reason I hate scented deodorants beyond telling- that stinky little phantom that accompanies you everywhere. Even scent-free deodorants often aren't.

2. I can live without summer but August is such a resonant month (so much has happened in August) and has such a style of its own, both here and there, that it's become one of my Top Three Faves. Blue sky, white clouds, sun, cicadas, the autumn preview (unless global warming has killed that), the first leaves starting to scatter messily from ailing city trees, September around the corner. September of course is usually a letdown.

3. Any chiropodist who's ever looked at my feet has had to sit down with smelling salts and a cold cloth for five minutes thereafter. 'You have two bags of skin with bones rattling around in them!' one said. 'How do you *walk*??' asked the other. "E come cammino? Cammino!" fer chrissake, what do you think. Well, and bicycle a lot.

4. I believe in ghosts. I consider the phrase 'believe in ghosts' to be as silly as 'believe in electrons.' I've never met a ghost and have absolutely no desire to at all at all at all. Universe, take note.

5. I thrash about in my sleep, rolling from side to side: I know this because I'm often half awake to feel me do it. I grind my teeth: I know this because my dentist tells me it's true. (I had a bite guard. I ground the bite guard so badly I woke every day with a headache.) I snore: I know this because I wake dry-mouthed and dry-nosed. Fortunately or alas, there's no one in bed with me to tell me any of these things.

6. Time was- and here I mean up until last year, just about- I was a night owl: bed for choice between 2 and 3, natural waking at 9:15 but 10:30's good too, best work done between 11 pm and 2 in the morning, having to be anywhere at 9 am a major imposition. This explains most jobs I've had- afternoon/ evening shift work. All things change with age: somehow now I wake at 8 at the latest so go to bed at sheesh midnight and feel 1 is dangerously late. I agree life is easier when one is in synch with the society, but I still feel my best writing is done in the early hours of the morning and resent the loss of that abandonment I used to have- naturally awake at 2 still typing away.

7. When you work with babies for (conservative here) 22 years you acquire a bunch of skills that can't be described because they're all non-verbal right-brain skills. One of them is reading baby body language and going from that information to figure what the baby wants. It's very hard to convey to students that, say, there's a difference between rocking a baby sideways and rocking her lengthways, and some babies prefer one way and others the other and you just have to, err, tell from the baby which it is. So, basically, I speak most of my second languages really badly but I speak Baby really really well.

No I shall not tag anyone, but I'll wonder hard about the quirks of incandescens, xsmoonshine, nojojojo, rasetsunyo, mikeneko and of course mvrdrk.

Comments

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

I know that 5 is probably true, and yet I have no evidence of it even after rooming with you last year.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

You're fast. I yanked this to edit because I pressed the wrong button earlier.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Consider also the possibility that you sleep very soundly indeed.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. I do that, sometimes. And I thrash. And I grind my teeth. And I guess that's one of my seven.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on ghosts. Which is strange for me as I'm trying to write a ghost story right now.

Such interesting quirks! Thank you for playing. ^_^

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

No prob. What I find strange is that your dreams are all the scariest things I've ever heard anywhere, except for real life experiences; I'd hate to have those *and* be terrified of ghosts.

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

I had a bite guard.

Is it one of those mouth guards for sports-types? The ones you mould using near-boiled water?

(Obviously, I grind, too. ^^;;;)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Do sports-types use those too? Yeah, you're supposed to soften it up before putting it in (that came out sounding oddly obscene.) Can't see why someone didn't figure the obvious response from a jaw-clamper- There's something in my mouth! Bite it bite it bite it!!

Blessed screwed be the irascible, for they shall have chronic headaches.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Mouth guards for sports-type things are different from bite guards for teeth grinders. The sports type things are like pacifiers, they have a front face to protect your teeth from getting knocked loose. They also may hold your top and bottom jaw in place relative to each other.

Bite guards I know of are more like retainers for modern braces or dentures, shaped like a U and fits over your teeth. It doesn't actually stop you from grinding. The outside is smooth so you can slide your teeth across them. The idea being that way you aren't wiggling your teeth loose while you're grinding them.

I've been working on not biting mine. Doesn't work so well when one's asleep.