Five things you didn't know about me

INCraig (tagged by Aussie Rock Chick) was lauding people who haven't yet done this meme to do it. Because I am pretty lazy and used up all my wit on that last post about John Howard, I thought I'd get in on the act (also figured I could do one post a week and the blogosphere would still find it difficult to narrow down the things it doesn't know about me to just five). So here goes....

1. I’m intimidated by the idea of pressing myself onto people in social situations. I can be very friendly and chatty with people at a networking level, but I have cold sweats about whether or not it is appropriate to ask some one around to my house for dinner, or if they want to meet for a coffee. My friend MW claims that the people I am friends with are the ones that have “forced me to be their friends”*, although “Anonymous” disagrees with that assessment. It certainly was the case with blogging that I had to be cajoled into it. I suspect it’s a level of insecurity that others find irritating.

It is also a marked difference between me and my friend Clara, who moved back to the area I’m living in at the same time I did. In that time (two months, I judge it) she already has a seven-thousand strong contingent of friends from “the good old days” and spent a lot of time trying to hunt me down when she heard I was back in town. More evidence that the above observation is a real phenomenon, but also compounds insecurity that I am a rude wench for not having done the same.

2. I once fancied myself a Goth. I wasn’t very good at it – I liked the clothes but have always been a bit of a co-ord when it comes to make up. Plus I could never bring myself to be as pessimistic as was required. Also I like the beach, quite a bit. That was a no-no. At my last workplace we had a 16 year old fully-fledged Goth come to do work experience and she hated my guts. That was my own fault – I found her darkened demeanour wryly amusing, and I was probably part of “the system” she was trying to rebel against. On the other hand, if you’re trying to impress your workplace supervisor, probably best not to scowl at them every time they ask you to do something, and taking days off when you’re only supposed to be there for a week is probably bad form also.

3. I am really, really going to miss my sister who has this morning headed overseas for two years. She and I are very close and I am trying to pretend that she isn’t really going so that I don’t get too upset about it. Sniff!

4. One of those Australian Diamond Company sandwich board guys in Bourke Street Mall once bribed several of my friends with lollies to give him my phone number. To the best of my knowledge they took the lollies and did not cough up the number. I don’t know how it was that they started that conversation, or how it was that I didn’t hear about any of it until later.

5. When Grizzlewick was born it took me a long time to relent to cleaning all of the goop off his wizened little head. I had quite a few stitches in the aftermath, during which they laid him across my (ample, at that stage) chest and only gave him a little bit of a sponge down. He had some quite large patches of grunge on the top/back of his head that stayed there for about 24 hours. I think I was too frightened to touch that particular part of his head because it was so soft. But also it was hard to let him out of my arms for long enough to do the cleaning that needed to be done. I guess you could call me selfish. Or a bad mother. Or both.



* It’s worth noting that MW has also been known to tell people that “she doesn’t have time for the friends she has now” when they try the same thing on with her.