Because I was tagged by not one, but two people...I figured I better do it. But the question is, what don't you all know about me after three years of blogging???

1. I hate bananas very much. Seeing them makes me queasy. Since John and I have been married, bananas have only been in our house twice. He loves bananas so I know it's a sacrifice...although, I've gotten better because both times I purchased the bananas. Meanwhile, for someone who just just loves bananas, he sure as hell didn't eat them!

2. I have a 30 second commute to work. I absolutely love it but sometimes I drive around the block just so that I can listen to a little more trash talk radio.

3. If no one was looking I would eat Duncan Hines Cream Cheese icing with a spoon, if my ass wasn't already "bootylicious"...any bigger and we won't have a cute name for it...it will just be incredibly large. My mom has been known to present me with a shiny spoon and a tub of this particular icing on my birthday because she knows I don't like cake...or any sweet things except for cream cheese icing.

4. I like my dog more than most people. But then again she's nicer than most people...and more articulate.

5. I am obsessed with blogs. I check my blogroll and anyone who comments me every day without fail, some several times a day because I want to reread what they've written. I think it's because I'm a natural voyeur. Blog reading, however, has seriously taken a toll on the amount of books I read. I used to read about 7 or 8 a week...now, I'm down to about one a month.

6. Some people might know this from the past but I LOVE to drink pickle juice from the jar. I think I knew deep down that John and I were going to make it when I saw him take a secret slurp from the jar one day. Now, we don't even try to hide it, we keep the pickle juice long after the pickles have been eaten for the express purpose of drinking the juice.

7. I have a genius IQ of 165. I cannot do any math in my head except addition and subtraction. Anything beyond fractions and decimals is completely beyond me. I am currently doing horribly in my Research Methods graduate class because I have to do statistics (it was supposed to just be a research study course dammit!). Despite all of this, I am married to a man who does math every day for a living...he's currently in charge of doing the math portion of my research study. Shhh, don't tell...

8. I could eat meat with every meal. I love meat. That sounds dirty but it's true in every sense of the word.

Anything else you want to know? Questions in the comments...

One- John is one fucking lucky ass man. Why you ask? Aside from being married to me (why must I restate the obvious), I am sitting here waiting for him to come home from work sprawled on the couch with a wine colored three quarter length shirt, a pair of his old plaid (green and red if you must know) boxers, a pink sock, a black sock and a messy side pony tail. I put all his porn sluts to shame. At least my legs are shaved. Go me!!

(obviously I'm not leaving the house any time soon...if I do...I might be persuaded to put pants on, then again I've been persuaded to leave them off too. It could go either way, really.)

Two- Today a girl said, "Take you hair out of your ponytail, your hair's so pretty when it's down". So I did as commanded (because I'm vain and I like my hair too); while do so I did the obligatory hair shake. Immediately, Hot For Teacher came into my head and I realized I had just done a hair flip worthy of Tawny Kittain on a car kind of move...I immediately put my hair back up before there was a Dateline feature about me and said, "It's too hot to have it down" and went back to babbling about how important it is to articulate your words.

(Please note, I'm nothing but proper at work, not a MaryKay LeTourneaux thought in my mind EVER...but it was just a funny second there).

Because I have to join the rest of the world and go back to work next week, my friends, the BCTs and I decided to have one last hurrah...and by hurrah I mean, a potluck dinner and a few glasses of wine. Over email, I piped up that I would be happy to make Chicken Marsala, which is probably the tastiest thing I can make in all the world. So this afternoon I set to work. Proud of my culinary talents, I packed everything up in some Tupperware, I followed the directions to my friend's new home.

When I pulled up I saw that I was the first to arrive. Not strange, I'm obsessive about being early or on time. I grabbed my phone and called Kelly. "Hey, are you 101 or 110?" She paused and seemed confused. I repeated myself, "Is your house number 101 or 110?" Kelly replied, "101" but there seemed to be a question in her voice. "OK, well I'm here" I said cheerily.

She opened the door with a baby on her hip and her dog did his best to tell me that he was not amused by my presence. She smiled and said, "This is going to be really funny..." I set my chicken on the counter and said, "What is?"
"Well M, you're a week early. But just think, you can take your chicken home and share it with John and then you can improve on it for next week."

So yeah, I apparently like to be so early that now I arrive at events a week early.

I am an ass.

Last night John and I were watching a comedian, Tom Pappa to be exact. Typically, we Tivo a bunch of Comedy Central Presents and weed them out/delete immediately if both of us don't issue a belly laugh in the first three minutes. Hey, it may be hasty, but there's only so much time in the day...

Well there we were on the couch laughing at Mr. Pappa's jokes when out of nowhere I start cracking up to the point where tears are just pouring down my face...but Pappa wasn't what I was laughing at. I pawed at the air and gasped, "Pause IT!"

John pauses it and looks at me quizzically, "What?"
And that's when I had to explain, well, after I laughed hysterically for five minutes by myself.

"Remember when we were watching that Lewis Black special and he said that there are certain sentences that if you think about long enough your head will explode?"
John nodded.
"Remember when he said, "Listen to this and try to wrap your brain around the mindfuck that is this sentence..."?
He nodded again, a smile spilling across his face. Like mind readers, at the same time we both uttered the sentence,
"If it wasn't for my horse, I would've never spent that year in college" and then we proceeded to laugh on the couch hysterically for about fifteen minutes.

The funniest part of this story came later when we were doing some things on the couch that shouldn't produce laughter when done correctly...and I couldn't stop thinking about the sentence!!! The best I could do was avoid eye contact, bite down really hard on my lip and think about baseball.

Seriously, say the sentence very slowly pausing appropriately at the comma and then tell me you didn't laugh. What the fuck does that even mean?

Some things to consider about our tarnished character:

John and I have been relishing in the Teen Jeopardy--Summer Games, because we can "totally school a bunch of teenagers" as he so elloquently put it. Yeah, that's right, we are excited about the fact that we have a more than decent grasp on bullshit categories such as "You Tube" and "Pop Music".

To make matters worse:

I relish in making fun of the teen contestants, John merely makes observations. The sweet freshman that was on the show last night made John turn to me and say, "She looks like someone...but who?" After a moment's pause he came back with, "She looks like Corey Feldman!" And it wasn't an insult against the poor kid, she just really looked like a young Corey Feldman. Now like I said, I like to make fun of the kids. For example, yesterday's young winner liked to build homing devices and put them in things that he often loses...for example, his backpack or his coat. I turned to John and said, "I guess he doesn't need to put a homing device on his virginity, does he?" See? That's just mean. True, but mean...and in about five years the smarty pants will probably own my soul with one of his new inventions--so, it's a trade off of sorts.

National Geographic anyone? Anyone?!?:

John and I sat staring at a Praying Mantis that was sitting on our table on the deck. John said something to the effect that we were watching the world's most boring episode of National Geographic. I pointed out that I still had my shirt on and thus wasn't quite that authentic. With neighbors milling about on either side of us, John did not urge me to peel off my top. His loss. I realized (after 10 minutes of intense staring) that the neighbors couldn't see the mantis and so to them, it appeared that we were both leaning forward and staring crazily at one distinct spot on our table. After seeing the mantis poke at a beetle, I decided to go inside so that the neighbors didn't have anything more to talk about...as if that were ever going to happen. We've already been called oddballs under their breath as we left the deck one night, lord knows what they call us behind closed doors.

And finally, if you had any respect for me, it's now gone:

My final submission of nerd-dom. I believe I've finally turned John to the "dark side" (we'll use terminology that he can understand). For a man who just loves himself some Star Wars, he was awfully reluctant to learn anything about Harry Potter. OK, whatever. I like Harry Potter...not enough to camp out to get the latest book or run to the midnight showing, but I think I have a healthy love for the kid. Amazingly, John has been able to avoid Herr Potter for all these years--until, I brought the first DVD home for him to watch. For the first 20 minutes, I had to fight him about turning it off/finding anything else to do except watching it(including rearranging couch pillows, ball scratching and belly button exploration). But finally, something clicked in his nerd DNA and he declared last night, "I think I love him!" And guess who rented the second DVD for him? That's right, I'm going to make him beg for a little more Potter...it's like pulling his x-wing star fighter in with my tractor beam (that's my little Star Wars reference to make him feel more comfortable with his latest trek down the Geek Path).

***PS. John, don't you think I look a little like Ashley Madison, over there in the ads??? You know, if I would put makeup on in the summer!?!****

Now a very important thing in a monagamous relationship is to keep things hot...you know, like a big spicy pot of Jambalaya (you will understand the food reference soon). So the other night I did my best to turn up the heat with John--I'm awesome like that, I suppose.

We started out with some smooches. I whispered in his ear, "Mmm, you taste like salami, I like salami it's one of my favorite lunchmeats" because well, he did...and it was cool because it's true, I like salami. He looked at me like I was crazy, ignored me with a little giggle and kept at his kissing work. Then things heated up a bit more. Clothes came off, kisses went everywhere and you all know how the game goes...and if you don't? You shouldn't be reading this blog and you should probably go ask your mommy about the birds and the bees (while you're at it, ask what insects and birds have to do with sex and let me know, m'kay?).

Moving on.

So just as things were getting supremely hot and I was all like, "Yeah! I'm gonna get me some of this husband of mine" (I talk to myself in my head like this sometimes, is that so wrong?). However, I say out loud, "And now I get to have some of my favorite of all lunchmeats!" in a really weird voice because I was still fixated on the salami comment, you see?(see the bottom of the post for an example of how I spoke...I'd be the green guy) I blame all of this, as well as the rest of my weirdness on the fact that I fell down sixteen stairs when I was two and landed on my head. Well, the martian voice and the off the wall lunchmeat statement got both of us laughing incredibly hard to the point where John just wasn't focused on his task at hand. Never fear, while laughing hysterically, I redirected him with a sharp heel to the back and all was well...aside from the mini crack ups throughout.

Later I thought he was leaning over to kiss me but instead he said, "So, we're resorting to weiner jokes now,huh? That's your foreplay script these days?"
"Of course not", I replied, " I'm not immature." He nodded and jabbed me in the ribs,
"It was going to be a joke about ring bologna, wasn't it?"

The man is a freaking mind reader.

My voice sounded like this:

While giving blood yesterday my pal Ml must've been feeling a little woozy. She revealed secrets...secrets about me. Secrets that are most delicate in nature; about what I like to do in my free time--for example, maybe...just maybe...I get drunk and I put my dad's prosthetic hook on my hand. C'mon! Tell me! Tell me that you wouldn't do it if you had had a hook sitting on a shelf looking all lonely-like.

The person that Ml told looked shocked. Ml tried to explain, "Well, it's just like a hat. Let's say your dad died and he left you a hat, you'd wear it right?"

The girl looked directly at Ml and said, "But it's not a hat, it's a hook!" Which made me think of the scene in I Heart Huckabees where Jason Schwartzman's character tries to give the valet his bike and tells him to pretend it's a car. The valet says, "But it's not a car, it's my job!" That made me giggle, and then it made me think of this...

The girl came in today and confronted me, "Do you wear your dad's hook when you're drunk?"
My reply was, "Well yes, sometimes then. But I wear it whenever I feel like really, why do you ask?"
She gave me the look reserved for small children and animals that are behaving badly and she told me that I'm cracked in the head. I didn't deny it. C'mon, it's not like I wear the hook out of the house. Yet.

PS. That's the real hook above.
PPS. It is covered in camouflage duct tape.
PPS. I have no idea why.