Confessions of an Elevator Wedgie Picker

Regardless of potential video surveillance in elevators, I unabashedly adjust my clothing in there.  Slippy bra straps, tights with those annoying rolling waistbands, or wedgies, I’m fixing it in the elevator.

I grocery shop in my parents’ kitchen.  It’s a habit that developed during the Ramen years of college, when I’d come home for breaks and systematically steal everything that wasn’t nailed down in my parents’ kitchen.  Now, I am more selective, but the habit still persists.  A box of brownie mix here, a handful of cookies there. More often than not, I leave my parents’ house with a bag of goodies culled from their cupboards.

If I work out at the gym and shower there, it’s a safe bet that I’m going commando when I leave.  I am incapable of remembering to bring a clean pair of skivvies and the very thought of putting on a pair of sweaty worked-out-in undies grosses me out.

I talk to myself.  Like, I will hold an entire conversation with myself in the car. 

I have several highly annoying verbal tics, one of which is the overuse of the word “so.”  I know it.  I cannot stop it.  Another is the use of what my friend B refers to as “Buster-isms.”  Quirky little sayings that my family and I use but normal people apparently do not.  Referring to Bemidji as “the armpit of the state” for example, or saying someone is “busier than a cat on a hot tin roof.”  I don’t really want to stop this tic because the looks on friends’ faces when I say something ridiculous always makes me smile.

Until a few months ago, the mister and I did not have nightstands.  We had two mismatched barstools that we balanced our clocks and water glasses on.

I don’t clean so much as I quick-fast race around for half an hour, seeing how much I can get done.  I have a short attention span and a hatred for household chores, so this blitzkrieg approach to cleaning is the best method I’ve found.

I once used my Swingline to repair a torn hem on a pair of pants.  I then continued to wash and wear the pair of pants for 6 months with the staples in the hem, rather than actually fixing it.

I never finish a bottle of wine.  I’ll pop the cork and have a glass, then put the remainder in the fridge where it will sit for 3 weeks until I just pour it down the drain.

I wait for the mister to go out of town so I can do projects he would otherwise disapprove of.  For example, the purging of video cassettes happened while he was gone.  (We don’t even own a VCR, but he would not let me toss the tapes.  Has he missed them since they’ve been gone?  Nope.)  This year, the crab apple tree in the front yards is getting chopped down as soon as he and his friends take off for a weekend trip.

I start knitting projects and never finish them.

I drop farts in store aisles and then hurriedly bolt for some other part of the store.

I am terrible at staying in touch with people. 

I listen to embarrassing music – it’s a bizarre mix of classical, oldies, soundtracks, and really irritating pop music.  Britney followed by Bach followed by Damien Rice.

I have read literature.  Hemingway, Faulkner, Conrad, Shakespeare.  I have read philosophy – Rousseau, Locke, Machiavelli, Nietszche.  My preferred reading?  Trashy romance novels, usually those featuring feisty heroines.

I own lots of t-shirts, but I don’t wear them to workout in.  Instead I steal the mister’s.  My favorite one is his D.A.R.E. shirt from the fifth grade. (Yes, he still owns it, and yes, I steal it on a regular basis.)

I don’t like any meat on my pizza but will not say this when a group of people is having the what-kind-of-pizza-should-we-get debate, so I always end up picking pepperoni and sausage off of mine.

I drink orange juice straight out of the carton.