Random is as Random Does

A local band from my area is releasing its first album for national radio, and I was asked to write a few promotional press releases and a band biography for them.  "We've got to make it hook-y," I was told, which makes perfect sense (and is much better than making it hokey, which should be avoided at all costs.)

It's made me wonder: What random hook-y facts could I share with you, my dear readers, to encapsulate how I think and operate?  And I came up with these entirely unessential tidbits:

1)  Some people accumulate souvenirs; I accumulate bruises.  Am I entirely unaware of my body and unobservant to my surroundings?  It would appear, yes.  Our queen-sized bed has been stationed in the exact same location for five years, yet I walk into it with regularity.  Often, my bruises have unknown origins.  How did you do that? Joel will ask, sucking air through his teeth, as he points to a nasty contusion on my left thigh, or my right shin, or my upper arm, and I will have no recollection, making me think I'm both injury-prone and an amnesiac. 

2)  On occasion I break into spontaneous dance moves.  While I used to believe there was little rhyme or reason behind these incidences, recently I've noticed a trend.  Spontaneous dance is triggered by prolonged absence from my children.  It takes several hours, but when I'm away from my kids for any extended period of time (a rare occurrence), the layers of responsibility start to shed like the outer peels of an onion.

I'm no longer in charge -- temporarily, at least -- for the physical safety, nutritional sustenance, emotional well-being, academic growth, moral training, or personal hygiene of anyone other than myself.  I barely can contain myself, which results in actions like this:

In case you were wondering, this is baton twirling using a fallen tree branch while running a team ultra-marathon through the woods.  I was amazing, I think.  The stick twirling more so than the running.

Rest assured, my spontaneous dancing isn't relegated only to forests.  Once I demonstrated how I dance at wedding receptions for one of my college classes.  Just the good moves, that is, the ones that my husband and I have dubbed the sprinkler, the lawnmower, and the thumb dance.  (Please note that I am entirely sober at all times, including weddings.  I never drink.  My oddities are entirely natural byproducts of stress leaving the body through large motor movement.)

3)  When I was nearing the end of my first pregnancy, I told my mother-in-law that I thought I would have the baby on the following Friday.  She gave me a pleasant smile, the same type of smile that I would give if a woman who never had delivered a baby prophetically declared when she'd deliver her first baby.

I had the baby the following Friday.  She was ten days early.  In fact, all three of my children were born ten days early.  I arrived at the hospital between one and two o'clock in the morning for each of them.

I like consistency.

4)  Sometimes I get sucked into unessential tasks that are time-sucking vortexes, yet I cannot seem to extract myself.  For instance, last week I noticed the various labels that I use while blogging to categorize the topic of each post.  My system seemed highly flawed.  Categories were too broad.  Categories were too narrow.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Suddenly this categorizational system was all I could think about, and a sick thought lodged itself in my head: I should revisit every blog post -- all 320 of them -- and label each one more appropriately.

Now this task would be equivalent to herding squirrels.  Or catching water with your open hands.  Or folding a fitted sheet neatly.  It's virtually impossible.  I know this.  I tried to tell myself: You're writing about life.  Life defies categories!

Yet, I spent one evening revising post labels until my eyes stung.  No one is ever going to look at it.

This attribute also is the driving force why I must prop up fallen pillows when I walk past couches, straighten and match crooked or mismatched shoes on our shoe rack, and systematically sort and put away my children's toys even though I know it will be disorganized again almost immediately.  Obviously, I need help with this.

5)  At any point in time, I have multiple notes strewn about the house on loose slips of paper or in small notebooks.  These notes are partially to-do lists, partially grocery lists, partially writing ideas.  It's not unusual for one piece of paper to say things like this:

Call Michelle
Tacos
Nasal spray
Review space!

Sometimes when I revisit these lists I don't know why items are documented.  In fact, I still cannot figure out what review space! means, which is troubling because it has an exclamation point and I'm quite stingy with exclamation points.  It must have been important.  I begin to get confused.  Am I supposed to buy nasal spray, or did I want to write something about nasal spray?

6)  Whenever I get a cold, my first line of defense always is nasal spray.  There are too many options in the cold medicine aisle, and I do not feel like an adult when I am there.  How am I supposed to know whether I need a decongestant or an antihistamine, a suppressant or an expectorant?  I just want to get better!  I just want to breathe out of my nose again so if my mouth happens to get taped shut, I won't suffocate.  I'm in no frame of mind to make decisions on what cold medicine to purchase.  My mouth is hanging agape, I haven't tasted food for days, and my head is about to explode.  At this point, I just need help.

I have no idea how nasal spray works.  I'm sure there's science behind it -- words like histamine and inflammatory -- but I like to think that it's magic. 

7)  Zucchini.  I love zucchini.  I also love guacamole, cherry pie, and Skittles.

Not necessarily together, though.