Five Things

[rushthatspeaks]

nineweaving tagged me for the five odd habits meme.

It is difficult for me to determine which of my habits are odd, because I suspect that I take the ones other people would find the strangest as being perfectly normal and unquestioned parts of my life.

However, I may as well try.

1. On the rare occasions in which I have to sleep by myself in a bed for any length of time, I start building up a pile of books day-by-day that eventually takes over at least half of the bed, even if the rest of the room is not cluttered at all. I may not even be reading some of the pile; they simply migrate. If left unchecked, the pile will eventually push me into hanging off the side of the bed, firmly clutching the side with my arm as I sleep. A few days after that, I'll be sleeping on the floor. I am firmly convinced that the content of the pile of books influences my dreams, and will go through my bedding looking for the culprit if I have an extremely unusual or confusing night. I will not share a bed with books by Lovecraft, Italo Calvino, L. M. Boston or Stephen King; I will actively put Patricia McKillip, Robin McKinley or C.S. Lewis in the bedclothes if I have been having nightmares.

2. I will not voluntarily stand between two mirrors, or between any greater number either. This is a lifelong habit currently validated by various facets of my neopaganism, and I consider Terry Pratchett to be very sensible on the subject in Witches Abroad. If I find that I am caught between multiple mirrors, I will do my best to get out as quickly as possible, and if I cannot will shut my eyes and make various apotropaic gestures. I also infinitely prefer looking into mirrors by natural rather than artificial light, and categorically refuse to look in a mirror between the hours of about midnight and six a.m.; I just feel better about things that way.

3. I habitually address cats as though they are sentient, although I have never decided whether I believe that they are. This extends to a point where I will ask strange cats for directions, sometimes with surprisingly helpful results.

4. Every morning when my wife or boyfriend wakes me, I sleepily mutter 'Five more minutes', and then, when they come back, 'Two more minutes'. However, because I am, in fact, asleep, I enunciate so poorly and slur so thoroughly that my lovers swear up and down that I am asking for 'Five Mormons' and 'Two Mormons', and the boy has threatened that due to college acquaintances he may in fact someday be able to provide me with two amused Mormons upon request. As a result of which, I have been assiduously training myself so that I can say things like 'Five Hindus' and 'Two Buddhists' in my sleep.

5. I speak in paragraphs, and what I mean by that is that I have learned how to enunciate both parentheses and capital letters audibly, so that even people who haven't been warned can tell. I also use Ciceronian rhetoric reflexively in everyday conversation, although I try to stop myself because this is not really a reasonable thing to do to people.

Comments

[jinian.livejournal.com]

You have successfully found habits I think are odd. And wonderful.

[navrins]

Does your collection of bed-banned Italo Calvino books happen to include one containing a short story called "Solidarity?"

[mixedborder.livejournal.com]

>I habitually address cats as though they are sentient

Oh, me too--and I do the same for cars, elevators, and trees.

[signy1.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who has problems with nightime mirrors. I have, on occasion, looked squarely at my own reflection in the dark middle of the night and I will swear that what looked back at me was not human. (I mean this in an entirely different sense than I would if I swore that I didn't look human after waking up early. One is a joke. One is not.) If I need to visit the bathroom in the night I try to avert or close my eyes while washing my hands.

[sovay]

because I suspect that I take the ones other people would find the strangest as being perfectly normal and unquestioned parts of my life.

Oh, yeah? So what are the perfectly normal and unquestioned parts of your life?

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

These are great...I actually do that with books, too, which is really the only problem with my current room arrangement -- the bed is longer than any of the walls, so there is this small gap behind it which steadily accumulates books until I go fish them all out every couple weeks.

[eredien]

Habit 5 is best.

[redbird]

The pile of books is (as you may know) common enough to have the name "scholar's mistress," though I think you're unusual in yielding the bed to them entirely.

[aurelia-star.livejournal.com]

After reading eredien's journal, I found this . Thought you might like it:-)

enjoy!!

~Emily