I know that my postings here have been few and far between lately, and I’m sorry for that.  It’s weird how sitting in front of a computer screen from 8 to 5 five days a week can make you so tired, but it does.  When I was a SAHD, at least I could try to write while The Pumpkin was napping.  Now, I cram in what quality time I can with my girls before one or all of us inevitably crash.  I try to stay up, really I do, but...  I don’t know if it’s just being tired or staring at a computer screen for 9 hours in a row that make my eyes feel like they want to either sew their lids shut or crawl out of their sockets and go soak in a mug of warm water, but either way, zombies don’t write much, and so, sleep wins out.  I know, I know, bad blogger!  Bad blogger!  And there’s so much to say, too....

But there’s nothing like a meme to give you a needed kick in the pants, right?  Yesterday, Kristen of Motherhood Uncensored tagged me for the “six weird things about you” meme that’s been getting tossed back and forth between mombloggers, among others, for like a year and is currently enjoying another go as meme of the moment.  I’ve been wracking my brain for six things here, and some of them aren’t weird per se but rather just evidence of me being a big fat nerd, but I’m sure some folks who know me in real life think I’m leaving stuff off, so feel free to remind me of my weirdness in the comments.

I’m tagging Superha, Eliaday, and Honglien123—and here’s a blanket tag to any dadbloggers who may read this.  Step up, weirdos!

1)  I don’t eat condiments.  Let me explain.  I make my own salsa, I make my own vinaigrettes, I eat barbeque sauce and marinara sauce and lots of other things.  But what will never knowingly pass my lips are things like ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, relish, guacamole, thick creamy salad dressings like ranch or thousand island....  Fine, call me weird, I don’t care.  It’s some weird combination of texture and temperature for most of these things.  Which is why I’d let a ham glazed in honey mustard (which I could cut off anyway) or a meatloaf glazed with ketchup go, but sully a sandwich with such spreads?  Never.  Ruin a french fry with some gloppy whatever (though I do appreciate a nice malt vinegar)?  No way.  And don’t get me started on those abominations people call “salads” but are really just some solids suspended in mayonnaise.  <shudder>

2)  I can pick things up with my toes.  More specifically, with my big toe and the next one over [what do you call the toe counterpart of the pointer finger? does it have a name? the little piggy who stayed home?], on both feet.  Sometimes, without even noticing or thinking about it, my toes naturally relax into a position with the big toe over and holding down the next one, into a pointing position.  I don’t know why, but I’ve been doing that as long as I can remember.  And picking up articles of clothing and such from the floor without having to bend down.  I’d call it “handy,” but, well, you know....

3)  There was a brief (thankfully) period in elementary school when I mistakenly thought that there was nothing cooler than rocking t-shirts with recognizable commercial cartoon characters in non-cartoon/parodic situations.  C’mon, you remember these things.  There were entire mall stores during the ‘80s that sold crap with Hanna Barbera and Warner Brothers characters doing contemporary activities or aping other pop-culture stuff.  And I thought that these were cool.  I wore them, begged my parents to buy them, every chance I got.  But for some reason, the only one I remember is a Flintstones/Miami Vice crossover parody, with Fred and Barney in shades, pastel t-shirts, and sport coats, flashing badges under the legend “Bedrock Vice.” 

4)  I once shaved a tiny bit of my eyebrows so they would angle up a bit.  This, again, was in elementary school.  And no, I will vehemently deny any accusations that I was actually trying to make my eyebrows look explicitly like Spock’s.  I mean, god, I’m a nerd, but c’mon!  I will only say that I vaguely remember thinking that a slight, barely perceptible angle would either look cool or smart or something.  I don’t know.  But that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

5)  From my first pair of glasses in 4th grade through the beginning of college, for some strange reason I mistakenly thought it would be a good look to always get my lenses tinted.  And not only that, my favored shade was some kind of gradient brownish/greyish thing which would be darker at the top and get progressively lighter toward the bottom.  In big, humongous frames.  I don’t know if I was trying to hide or what.  But it was not a good look.

6)  Obviously, if you read any of my other blogs, you already can gather that I’m a little race obsessed.  I mean, it’s not as if I consciously only eat brown rice instead of white, or I refused to segregate the colored laundry.  But yeah, I’m a little “addicted to race.”  [Subliminal advertising alert: go listen to me co-hosting the Addicted to Race podcast and go enter the Rice Daddies book review contest before it ends Friday night!]  During college, the first thing I’d do on the first day of a new class was to make a tally in the margin of my notebook of the demographic diversity—perceived race, gender.  When we moved to Bakersfield, stunned by the homogeneity, we created our own little racialized version of “punch buggy” while we drove around—”Look honey, there’s a black person!”  “Ow!”  And just the other day, when a fellow Asian American dadblogger, known for his unique sense of humor, changed his blog’s background to white and made a note of it in a post, I,  of course, had to call him a “sell-out.”  See, even as I write this, I can see that some of you are not going to think that’s funny, or understand why that’s funny.  [I recommend “Ego Trip’s Big Book of Racism.”  But watch that you don’t laugh for the wrong reasons, you racist.]  But if you do think it’s funny, then chances are you’re as obsessed as I am.  [I am, after all, the guy who wrote his frakkin’ senior thesis in ethnic studies on the mixed-species characters in “Star Trek.”]