I am Unique

The other day, I was thinking about certain qualities, certain quirks that I have that make me unique. We all have them. Things that we do, things that we like, things that make us tick, things that make us who we are, things that make us different from others, things that make us stand out, things that make us special. What makes you unique?

25 Unique Things About Me

1. I am a terrible cook but I love watching Top Chef. I like learning about techniques that the cooks use, and hearing cooking terminology, and I'm constantly amazed at what the chefs can create from their brains. When I cook, I have to follow a recipe card and pay attention to every detail for everything that I make, even if I've made it dozens of times, otherwise I mess it up!

2. I have an unexplained attraction to to looking at house plans, and have ever since I was a teenager. I love looking at blue prints and figuring out how a space will look, and I love walking through houses to see how the architecture of the plan works. It's exciting to walk through homes that are under construction, even if I have no idea who's home it is and I have no idea what the end product is actually going to look like!

3. I am chronologically anal: blogging, scrapbooking, journaling, photo editing...I can't write what's happening now until I catch up on what happened in the past. This is not always a good quality. I get behind, and I refuse to advance to the present-day happenings until the past is taken care of, and then I lose details of my present life because I won't record them. It happened in my high school journals, it's happened in my scrapbooks, it's happened on my blog...

4. I love randomly using quotes from TV shows or movies. I've done this for years-I used to play a "jeopardy" type game with my sisters making them guess what movie I was talking about when I said a quote. And I find myself enjoying the company of others now who have similar tendencies with quoting movies, plays, and TV shows.

5. I am completely honest with myself and others. If you ask me a question, I'll tell you the truth. I'm a terrible liar. I actually pride myself on my honest attribute; I feel like it's my one and only redeeming quality. But because of it, I completely dislike liars, and it's hard for me to forgive others who are close to me that have been dishonest with me. 

6. I love to perform in front of people. I have ever since the 3rd grade when I had a miniscule 1-line part in our class program. Being in the theater was the best thing for me in high school. I used to dream about being in community theater when I grew up, but then I moved to a city without an auditorium. I really miss being on the stage now.

7. I can always tell when people get haircuts, and I always compliment others that I see who have recently gotten one. When I was a child, I wanted to be a beautician when I grew up, so I paid a lot of attention to others' hair. And I still do. I seem to neglect my own, though!

8. I love to hum/sing songs to myself. I do it so much so that I don't realize I've been doing it until other people either stare are me wondering what I'm singing or others start singing the same song and I wonder why they're singing it. I also make songs out of everyday life things, interject them into a tune, and create new songs constantly. Seriously, it feels like everything in the whole world fits into a song.

9. I am mono-chromatic. I do it with my home-decorating, and with my clothes. I like wearing one color and having every single accessory match. I can't figure out how different colors go together. When I was in 4th grade, I wore purple pants with a red shirt and got made fun of terribly. I feel like it's better to stick with one color and look good, than to mix colors and look awful. My husband is good at mixing colors and looking good, though. I don't know how he does it.

10. I like trimming trees. Before Josh and I moved away from Tremonton, we took a tree-trimming class to assist us in the Landscape Maintenance business that we were managing. I was hooked after that class. I love trimming trees by myself or pointing out to Josh which branches need to be cut while he's doing the trimming. Every spring and fall, I look forward to it.

11. I memorize names. Beginning in 7th grade, I would peruse the yearbook whenever I was bored. I did it in high school, too, and by the time I graduated, I knew the names of everybody in my 325+ graduating class (now I can't remember half of them). When I worked at the credit union here in Salmon, I memorized the names of the members, and it was a great way to feel like I belonged to the community. Now I know more people that live here than my husband, and he grew up here!

12. I have vivid dreams, and I remember them too. I still remember my recurring dreams from my youth. In my childhood, I dreamed that I could float to the ceiling of my house and I would float down the hallway and into people's rooms watching them sleep. As a teenager, I dreamed that I was buried in a street, and I was reincarnated as an Indian. Sometimes I invest too much feelings into my dreams, like last week I dreamed that Josh married another girl, and I woke up and was so mad at him the whole day even though he didn't actually do anything wrong in real life.

13. I can't improvise.  I tried doing Improv in debate in high school, and I bombed every time. When I'm in front of people improvising, I get so nervous that I start to sweat, and I speak in a high-pitch voice at a super-rapid rate. I don't like that about myself, and I try to make sure that I'm prepared with information when I know I'm going to be in that type of situation. And yet, I still haven't come out of one Sunday School class I've taught or one Elementary School musical program I've directed without sweating and having rapid speech! 

14. Every night, I get thirsty as soon as I brush my teeth. It happens the instant I'm done rinsing, but it never seems to occur at any other time when I brush--only at night. And even though it happens every night, I never remember to bring a glass into my bathroom. So I either have to go back out to the kitchen for a glass of water, or I drink some of Josh's that he always remembers to bring to bed every night.

15. I'm a Spell-Checker Nazi. When Josh and I lived in Pocatello, I worked as a proofreader for the advertising department in the local newspaper. I loved that job. Now I proofread everything, and I hate especially when words are misspelled on TV or the newspaper or online.

16. I like mowing the lawn. But it has to be done with a push-mower because I like making the straight, even lines. Whenever my son mows the lawn, he uses grandpa's riding lawnmower, because the job gets done in twenty minutes. Even though it would reduce my time dramatically if I used it, I won't because I can't stand the way the lawn looks after a riding lawnmower has done the job. I would rather push one for an hour in order to create the nice, even lines to stare at for the next week!

17. I'm a loud person, but I always lose the vocal arguments in my marriage. My husband has paralyzed vocal chords, so he can't yell. And yet, he still wins the arguments! Go figure.

18. I fart when I travel. I don't know why that is, but it's true. If I'm in the car for a few hours, it happens. And unfortunately, anybody who's ever gone on road trips with me knows this fact and can vouch for the statement.

19. I love balancing the checkbook, just not my own. After working at the credit union for five years, I grew to love balancing the cash drawer. I loved how it always said "Zero" at the end, because I knew that meant I was 100% balanced. I just hate doing it to my own personal checkbook, because when it says "Zero" at the end, I know it means I have no money rather than from doing the job right!

20. I make food items be aligned perfectly. Specifically speaking, when I eat ice cream, I scoop it out in shallow, even rolls because the ice cream container has to be level. I hate when there's a giant crater in the ice cream from someone taking a big, deep scoop from the middle. When I eat cheese, I need to make sure it's flat and even before I start slicing pieces. I hate unevenly-cut cheese. So if the cheese block appears to be diagonal, I have to first cut off the diagonal part from the last person who cut it incorrectly.

21. I love symmetry. I like when homes have symmetrical architecture. I hang my pictures on the walls in a symmetrical pattern. I create symmetrical craft projects. I hate when things look "off" or "uneven" or "unequal".

22. I love extra pulpy orange juice, but my husband hates it. So I buy the pulp-free orange juice. And every time I buy it, I think about what I lovingly sacrifice for my family.

23. I am good at harmonizing. When I was in the 8th grade, I was a 2nd Soprano in the girls choir and I couldn't figure out why the other 2nd Sopranoes kept singing the 1st Soprano melody part. It took me years to realize that not everybody can actually sing harmony. I love harmonizing to songs on the radio, and creating a complementary back-up voice to the recorded artists.

24. The sight of blood makes me queasy. Seeing bloody noses and bleeding cuts and gashes make me gag. I passed out once from watching my own finger get pricked. I've never donated blood because of it. Thankfully Josh has a very high tolerance level for blood, so he handles it when it happens to the children.

25. I tie shoelaces in the MOST bizarre way. Not your typical rabbit ears way. When my grandpa was teaching me, I got confused about the rabbit ears, so I made up my own way. I throw the right side over the left side, put the left over the right to create an X, put my left thumb in the hole, pick up the left shoelace with the right hand, push the lace through the hole with my two left-hand fingers, and pull on both sides to create two loops. I didn't realize it was so odd until we started teaching our boys how to tie shoelaces. At least Josh knows how to tie them normal! I wouldn't want want my sons to be confused about it like I was!