Ten Things I Hate About--Oh Wait, Wrong Movie

I figure that since reading this blog-thing will probably be pretty boring if you don’t know me as a person (because, redundancy aside, my personal writing is rife with personal references) I should take the time to just list off some random factoids that probably will never come up again and, as an added bonus, serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

                I swear I’m only pessimistic under stress, promise.

1. My biggest pet peeve EVER is having someone tell me that they know something I should know, but then refrain from telling me. It’s like dangling bacon in front of a starving man! My second biggest pet peeve is when people forget to clean up after themselves.

2. Dancing is so much fun! I love dancing in all its forms and while I might not be the best at dancing, I still love getting out on the floor just so I can feel myself move. There’s a very special type of joy that comes with dancing, one that I encourage everyone to try and experience.

3. My favorite country is, without a doubt, Croatia. Dubrovnik is a city of welcome and history, one I really felt I connected with when I visited it last summer. In a perfect world that involves me being a wildly successful author (fingers crossed!) I would get a house there.

4. I have some really weird nicknames, the oddest which might be ‘Samantha.’ The story behind that name is actually pretty simple: I loved the Samantha “American Girl” doll when I was a kid and refused to be called by my real name (which I started to hate when the child-me realized it doubled as the name of a state) in favor of adopting the doll’s. My parents only ever use the name ‘Samantha’ when they’re making fun of me or to bring up an example of how adamant I can get on the stupidest of issues, but considering that I’m pretty dang easy to make fun of… well, you get the picture.

5. After working as a tour guide at the museum’s aquarium, I have developed a deep and abiding love of sea creatures—cephalopods in particular. I now have a list of my favorite cephalopods, the amphioctopus marginatus (or the “coconut octopus”) topping the list.

6. The above is kind of strange considering that I’m afraid of swimming in the ocean.

7. My childhood home is a house on a ranch in the middle of Central West Texas. I miss it every day, especially the misty morning walks I used to take with my grandpa.

8. I know how to shoe a horse. I also know how to deliver a foal. My grandpa used to be a Ferrier and he taught me how to care for the horses on the ranch. It’s kind of a family standard that you should be able to take care of both yourself and everything you love all by yourself, so I was raised under the “know how to do stuff” rule in basically all aspects of my young life. This extends to home maintenance, laundry, sewing, car mechanics… I can do a lot of really random things thanks to the environment in which I was raised, and to my father and grandfather for taking the time to teach me.

9. Do you think it’s weird when people pull up to a stop sign and go so far into the intersection that the back tires of their cars are on the white line? Because you’re supposed to put your FRONT TIRES on that line, not your BACK ONES. I keep seeing people do it and it super-bugs me!

10. I am allergic to nuts and cats (which is odd considering just how much I love peanut butter and lions, but hey, taken in small doses and with an EpiPen…).

                I’ll find something relevant to write about next time, I promise.

                                ~G.