Weirdness

This blog really does nothing but enumerate the many ways in which I'm weird, so for a change I decided to list 5 of my more harmlessly eccentric habits.
Thanks, Laura for the memeing!

1. I don't like green food. Not naturally green things like peas, broccoli, lime, honeydew melon etc and certainly not artifically green things like cordial, snakes, jelly (jello, not jam), or even mint chocolate-chip ice cream. (After many years of people listing green things that surely I must like at me, I've found 2 exceptions: kiwi fruit and green grapes, but it's still hard to find grapes that are sweet enough)

2. I don't like any fizzy drinks at all. Or coffee. Or tea. Or alcohol. This is harder to deal with than you'd think. It's surprisingly hard to turn down offers of the standard drinks, or convince people that really just water (from a tap, not fancy sparkling stuff) would be great, without seeming rude. I've tried to choke down drinks many times, but this isn't really an improvement since it takes such a long time to make a dent in the volume when you're taking tiny sips, that it still seems very rude. It doesn't help that I have a pathological fear of expressing an opinion, either.

3. I eat bread, pizza etc crust first. This is a relic of my childhood when I was all about the delayed gratification. I could make my easter eggs (the only reliable source of high-concentration refined sugar all year) last from March/April until at least September. Sadly, the accompanying ability to get out of bed at 6am in order to fit in piano practice before school has also long gone.

4. I love books as physical objects perhaps too much. If I'm buying a book I'll inspect every single copy to ensure I get the most pristine one with no creases or chips taken off the spine, even if there are 50 books there. I also find my favourite books in bookshops, just to pick them up and hold them. I have to remind myself that I already own a copy in order to convince myself to let go and I still feel the pang of loss at leaving them behind. This is especially hard now that my own copies are thousands of miles away, so I have broken down and bought a few duplicates. Of course, at home I have at least 4 different editions of each book in "the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy, so availability of a copy that's mine isn't always enough. I also hate to lend books for fear the borrower won't take sufficient care of them. My mum is too scared to read my books now after seeing too many of my pained expressions while she opened a book wide enough to make the spine crease. The time she actually left one face down and I had to rescue it was probably the loudest reaction she's ever heard from me. This only applies to books that actually belong to me (or someone I know), though. Library books can be put into my backpack without multiple protective layers and preferably a box. To my shame, I use to dog-ear the corners to mark my page, too, but I've reformed. I used to write my name in my books in primary school, but that was when I used to lend them to people, too. I still haven't forgiven Amy W. for stealing my copy of "Stacey's Mistake" when we were 9 (she claimed to have given it to someone else to give back to me). The ideal situation is to own a perfect copy of a book and read only the library's copies. I also read while walking anywhere, and have done pretty much since I started reading books small enough relative to my body to be manageable. I'm yet to be hit by a car or pedestrian, although I've made a few people stop in a hurry.

5. I don't wear black clothes ever. I have one pair of black dress pants and a black skirt, neither of which I wear often, but anything near my face has to be coloured. My mum seems to think black is the colour that suits me best, so it took some effort to avoid black clothing while she was still buying my clothes. She did convince me to get a black dress when I was about 13. I gave in because I really loved the dress, but they didn't have it in any other colour. I think I wore it twice. I'm not sure why I have such a repulsion for black; it just seems depressing. Even when that would match how I feel, I can't bear to wear it. Maybe I'm worried that the colour would drag my mood down into the suicidal range. I also hate writing in black pen; it's so gloomy-looking. Blue ink is so much nicer.