Six Weird Things
I've been tagged with a meme. Karen Sandstrom tagged me to write six weird things about myself.
1. I frequently dream that I look different than I actually do. Last night I dreamed I was a very short, very overweight woman who wore white pants and sandals and painted her toenails. I was living in Africa with my new husband and his many children, who were in high school and older. It was somewhat stressful.
2. I once had a temp job where I was recruiter (or as they are more commonly called, a headhunter) making cold calls to department store buyers to steal them away to a department store chain that is now defunct. I did this for $7.25 an hour and no benefits. I now find it somewhat difficult to call people, even friends.
3. When I was a kid, I played with Barbies. Actually, I preferred Skipper because she seemed to have a much better handle on the whole eye shadow thing. What I liked to play best was "After the Nuclear Holocaust" which took place, as you would expect, post apocalyptically, when radiation has made people have mutant powers. When I could get someone to play with me, we would use our dolls and my Bryer horses, and make the dangerous trek across the basement and up the mountainous stairs, surrounded everywhere by dangers. This did not involve Ken, cars, dreamhouses, or even Barbie clothes, since after the nuclear holocaust you will have to make your own clothes.
4. I sometimes have hypnagogic hallucinations. I warned Bob before I married him. These are a sort of waking dream. For me they seem to involve two senses--say vision and touch, or vision and sound. One night, about a year after we had been married, I got out of bed, waking Bob up. He asked me what was wrong. I explained to him--I was awake and understood him perfectly--that there were spiders in the bed. He paused and then said carefully, 'How big are they?' I told him they were saucer-sized. He told me it was a hypnagogic hallucination. This seemed really reasonable to me, but since I had felt them, I told him I would have to turn on the light. Turning on the light breaks the experience. It did, and I could get into bed and go to sleep.
5. My grandparents were all born sometime in the 1880's and '90's and I am only the fourth generation since the Civil War.
6. In the last few years, I have lost a significant portion of my sense of smell. This is called hyposmia, and in most cases, there is no known cause, although it can be caused by inflammation, head trauma or depression. A complete loss of the sense of smell is called anosmia. Since a lot of what we think of as taste is actually smell, anosmia can be be a profound experience. Hyposmia, I can confirm, is sometimes annoying, but sometimes quite useful, especially when you have dogs.
I'm trying to think if there is someone who hasn't been tagged with this.
Tom Kasten at Musing With Mud.
Walter Jon Williams at Angel Station.
(If you would rather not post weird things, this tag is not meant to be binding.)
1. I frequently dream that I look different than I actually do. Last night I dreamed I was a very short, very overweight woman who wore white pants and sandals and painted her toenails. I was living in Africa with my new husband and his many children, who were in high school and older. It was somewhat stressful.
2. I once had a temp job where I was recruiter (or as they are more commonly called, a headhunter) making cold calls to department store buyers to steal them away to a department store chain that is now defunct. I did this for $7.25 an hour and no benefits. I now find it somewhat difficult to call people, even friends.
3. When I was a kid, I played with Barbies. Actually, I preferred Skipper because she seemed to have a much better handle on the whole eye shadow thing. What I liked to play best was "After the Nuclear Holocaust" which took place, as you would expect, post apocalyptically, when radiation has made people have mutant powers. When I could get someone to play with me, we would use our dolls and my Bryer horses, and make the dangerous trek across the basement and up the mountainous stairs, surrounded everywhere by dangers. This did not involve Ken, cars, dreamhouses, or even Barbie clothes, since after the nuclear holocaust you will have to make your own clothes.
4. I sometimes have hypnagogic hallucinations. I warned Bob before I married him. These are a sort of waking dream. For me they seem to involve two senses--say vision and touch, or vision and sound. One night, about a year after we had been married, I got out of bed, waking Bob up. He asked me what was wrong. I explained to him--I was awake and understood him perfectly--that there were spiders in the bed. He paused and then said carefully, 'How big are they?' I told him they were saucer-sized. He told me it was a hypnagogic hallucination. This seemed really reasonable to me, but since I had felt them, I told him I would have to turn on the light. Turning on the light breaks the experience. It did, and I could get into bed and go to sleep.
5. My grandparents were all born sometime in the 1880's and '90's and I am only the fourth generation since the Civil War.
6. In the last few years, I have lost a significant portion of my sense of smell. This is called hyposmia, and in most cases, there is no known cause, although it can be caused by inflammation, head trauma or depression. A complete loss of the sense of smell is called anosmia. Since a lot of what we think of as taste is actually smell, anosmia can be be a profound experience. Hyposmia, I can confirm, is sometimes annoying, but sometimes quite useful, especially when you have dogs.
I'm trying to think if there is someone who hasn't been tagged with this.
Tom Kasten at Musing With Mud.
Walter Jon Williams at Angel Station.
(If you would rather not post weird things, this tag is not meant to be binding.)
posted by Maureen McHugh at 11:18 PM
9 Comments:
My grandparents, too--both my parents were middle-and younger children of very large families; and they got married and conceived late. I like to think it gives me a stretched and enhanced sense of time.
Oh, blek.
Okay, I'll get something up tonight.
Tom Kastan
No real obligation, Tom. Only if you want to--I know you've been busy.
It is going to take me a long, long time to get over this Skipper thing.
1. I should have figured your weird things would be, like, pretty much the most interesting things on the internet right now.
2. I forgot about Skipper, totally, until you mentioned her. Then I remembered that Skipper was the doll my mother got me when I was at an age she deemed too young to have a doll with giant bazooms. It never dawned on me to set her in a post-apocolyptic world, which is why you are the writer you are and I am . . . not.
3. Your waking dreams sound terrifying.
HB2u
HB2u
HBmcQ
HB2u
Thanks Tom! I got a pasta machine and a CD and a cookbook!
A couple of weeks ago, I got a Russian Yuri Gagarin pocketwatch, to replace my Russian Ballistic Missles forces one that broke. Ebay, go figure.
I'm not allowed to get cookbooks any more, since I abused the privilege before I met Julie.
Pasta machines are great fun. I need to make some with Steph, our resident pastavore.
Sorree, I was already been tagged a year ago.
I haven't developed enough weird new things in the last year, so folks can check out my archives responses here:
http://walterjonwilliams.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_archive.html
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