that survey what’s going ’round.

1.) Will you agree to let a lover use your toothbrush? Why or why not?

In extreme circumstances, even now if I find that rich has used my toothbrush in the blur of early shift ablutions I have to clean it before I use it.

2.) In your bad dreams do you ever throw the slow motion punch?

I have never caused violence in a dream but I have often done show motion running, stuck-in-gloopy-syrup running while being chased by people intending to harm me. I then escape by flapping my arms insanely fast which allows me to lift off the ground a few feet in an upright position!

3.) Do you eat or give away pickles?

I’ll eat them if they’re in the meal (eg McDonalds (which I don’t actually eat now but used to) ) but not on their own. Tally loves them.

4.) Do you match and ball socks or just dump them, en masse, into the drawer?

It depends on how much time I have!

5.) Do you bisect your sevens with one of those squiggly hyphens? When writing the number 2 do you loop the bottom?

Sometimes, it depends on how quickly i’m trying to write and how flourishy I feel!!

6.) When eating out, do you set your knife atop your plate and change hands?

This is an interesting question since this is, very much, an American way to eat. In England I always had the knife in my right and fork in my left, when I moved to Florida I learned this fun new way to eat and I still prefer it. My girls eat this way too!

7.) Do you tear into wrapped presents or open them neatly with the spoken intent to save the paper?

Rip those mothers open in as subtle a way as possible so people don’t realise I’m doing it!

8.) Would you rather drive or be driven?

Interesting one since rich refuses to drive. I would love him to drive which would make long journeys so much easier for me. At the same time I do love driving 🙂

9.) Do you engage strangers in conversations on airplanes? If no, it’s odd, isn’t it, when the time comes to accept peanut packets or order sodas and you hear their voices?

***thinks back wistfully to solo travel*** I would always be friendly to my seat mates but reveled in the solitude of flying alone. I’ve always loved my own company and treasured it even before having kids. On one flight I was on I was in the middle seat of the middle row of a 747 and chatted to the friendly lady next to me. As the flight carried on she partook of the free alcohol with gusto and got louder and louder, her noxious became so obbed that I was praying for escape but we were on a plane! There was the toilet, hanging around the stairs etc… but it was a nine hour flight and I’d have to come back at some time. Since she was ‘chatting’ to *me* i was desperately sending silent messages to the people around me so they knew that I was hating every second of it as much as they were! I even tried to watch a movie with headphones in place but no, she wasn’t going to be put off by that!! That just created a challenge to keep including me in her conversation at higher volume. Ugh… So bloody horrible.

10.) Do you own a bathrobe?

Yes. Very old, very gray, very holey and very loved.

11.) Are they still there, those ascending horizontal lines that marked your growth as a child up a wall or a door?

There *would* be – it’s the same house, the same kitchen and the same door. Except they were being done in the 70’s/80’s so the door has been painted since then. We have a removable Charlie and Lola height chart for the girls. Lila goes on one side and tally on the other 🙂

12.) Can you write at all with your opposite hand?

Yes. We went on the dullest holiday EVER in 1985. I actually enjoyed it in that solitude kind of a way but there were lots of arguments and my older sister never came on a family holiday again! Anyway, I spent rather a large proportion of that holiday practicing writing left handed and now I can do it without thinking, albeit rather messily.

13.) Do audiences affect your attempts to urinate or parallel park?

Two questions, two answers. I learned to drive during a small period during which parallel parking wasn’t in the test. Therefore I didn’t learn to do it. Fast forward a couple of years, I was trying (and failing miserably) to parallel park when I noticed the car in front of me was a driving instructor car with a driving instructor in it. I got out of my car and asked him to come into my car to teach me to do it. Very grumpily he agreed and so I learned, vaguely. When I lived in London I had to parallel park and got pretty good at it. One day I was parking in a diddy space and a man stopped to help, he beckoned me forward gradually until I hit the car in front, he had a good giggle and walked off. I was fuming! Luckily I was going so slowly there was no damage! Now I do it so rarely I’m shit at it again! If there is likely to be anyone anywhere near I will just avoid the manoeuvre like the plague!!

As for weeing. Well, I had the most horrific phobia for a long time. If it was quiet and anyone else was waiting for a public loo I Just. Couldn’t. Do. It! I would end up in agony from not weeing sometimes. I would desperately try to time my wee with the hand dryer but would be so tense about when it would finish that it rarely worked. The only way I could do it was if my mind was distracted at exactly the right moment. A bit like Arthur Dent learning to fly. Graffiti, a poster, a strange paper dispenser manufacturer name. Anything. But those times were rare. It was being with rich that made me get over it. I honestly don’t know why but we both celebrated that I could wee with him around. I still have a rare re-occurrance but they really are rare.

14.) Do you bookmark or dog-ear your books?

I fold the corners baby!! Really damages the kindle though 😉

15.) Do you mind fighting losing battles?

I won’t change my beliefs even if I’m in a minority. I will also often stay quiet while people spout garbage because I know that stating my case won’t change their opinion. People often think that I agree with them because I don’t disagree with them. They’re very, very wrong.

16.) Do you check the dates on coins?

And I put them in date order in piles… I get very excited when I find a childhood coin but they are so much rarer than they used to be. I also used to love those old 5p pieces that actually had old! money written on. Were they a shilling? I don’t remember!

17.) Do you like to be the one who holds the tickets (for airplanes, movies, etc.)?

Hell no, Rich can do that. He’s so much more organised than I am!

18.) Can you sleep with socks on?

On the very coldest of nights, but it really has to be insanely cold.

19.) Are you a sucker for foreign accents?

Languages yes, accents? Not so much.

20.) Are you skilled at giving directions?

As long as you don’t want road names, yes.

21.) Is your name frequently mispronounced?

My surname is. For those who know it, it has nothing to do with being quiet!

22.) Do you attempt to pronounce foreign words correctly, such as calling a crescent-shaped roll a cwaSAHN?

Of course, I don’t think it’s pretentious at all. If a word is designed to be said a certain way then say it! One of my big problems with spanish is that, apparently, I sound 100% British no matter how hard I try to get it right!

23.) Do you think grades in school mattered?

I really wish I had passed my maths at school!

24.) Can you tie a tie? What about a bowtie?

In the 80’s the thin leather tie was *the* fashion accessory so I learned to tie it. I can’t do it very well but I can do it. Bow ties not so much. At my sister’s wedding the men wore bow ties and later in the evening her husband walked in with his unfastened around his neck. We were all busy being impressed that he had worn a tie-able bow tie but it turned out to be staged. The tied one was a clip and had been replaced by the other.

25.) Does making a good list ever feel like an accomplishment in itself?

My lists always have an underlined title. However out is usually shopping list or packing list as I’m not a list maker as a general rule.

26.) Have you ever been on fire?

Not that I can recall… I do love the smell of burning hair. Interestingly, in her goth/smoking days my sister had a slight issue with hair sprayed, back combed hair that hung down over her face and a cigarette lighter. Her hair burned incredibly quickly! Luckily it didn’t burn her. She also nearly set fire to the house… Although I may be exaggerating… Our parents had gone on holiday leaving us at home. I was upstairs studying for my o levels and she was downstairs with a friend. I went down and they were smoking, flicking their ash in the wicker waste paper bin in the living room. I told them it could set on fire and received rather monosyllabic, grumpy noises that suggested I was being an overtly bossy elder sister who should keep her nose out of their business. I went back to my room and approximately half an hour latest heard them shrieking in the drive. I looked out of the window and saw them doing some sort of mad pagan dance around a blazing, wicker waste paper bin… I suddenly went from bossy big sister to hero when I walked out, placed a metal bin over the top of it therefore extinguishing the fire. I them tipped the burned papers into the metal bin and doused them with water. The wicker bin had a burn up one side and, as the one in my room matched, I swapped them over. My mum asked and never found out why the wicker waste paper bin in my room had burn marks.

27.) Are your faucets tricky to the point where were an out-of-towner to use your shower, you’d feel the need to give a tutorial?

Nah, you’re pretty much good to go in ours.

28.) Do you tend (or did you tend) to date people older or younger than yourself?

I’ve swung both ways when it comes to age. My forever man is slightly less than a year older than me.

29.) When walking or driving with a companion in a place where your companion is familiar and you are not, do you tend not to pay any attention whatsoever?

Rich never knows where he is, his sense off direction missed it’s target the day he was born!! He can’t even find the car in the simplest of car parks… I, on the other hand, have a built in compass. I remember getting fed up as a kid because I couldn’t get lost. I got annoyed with the kids fiction I read because getting lost didn’t seem like a reality. It wasn’t until I was in my mid twenties that I discovered its quite a talent! I never really need to take notice because I always know where I am anyway.

30.) Do the number of beaches you’ve been on exceed your fingers?

I don’t think I could even begin to count! Way, way beyond fingers and toes 🙂