It's my blog world, and I say NO CLOWNS ALLOWED

Clowns scare me. They have such big happy smiles, the better to HIDE the evil inside, of course. When clowns look at you, they know things. Secret things. And they want to eat you. Clown faces are NOT ALLOWED here. It's MY blog world! Or dolls, because they have faces too and sometimes don't you think their little beady eyes follow you as you cross the room? Once I stayed in a friend's friend's guest room (Yeah that's you Laurie and Melania) and she had dolls on shelves all over the room. Six or seven or a thousand dolls, just looking down on me in my defenseless guest bed. I did what I had to do, of course. I slept, but I wasn't happy about it. And my friend's friend was puzzled the next day when she found all of her precious dolls facing the walls. At least their heads were still on. I'm so freaking brave.

So it goes without saying that I hate masks of all sorts - Halloween or Harlequin or Tribal or Dallas Socialite - and cooked faces. A whole fish on my plate? Absolutely not. Shrimp with heads as I hear shrimp are eaten in Spain? PLEASE. I'm going to Spain next year and the first Spanish phrase I need to learn is "I don't eat faces".

Long long ago, my ex-husband (EX for many more reasons than this, I assure you) and I went to a lovely restaurant in Maine and he ordered a whole lobster for me as a surprise. My breath stopped as the waiter approached our table with two lobsters on two plates. I braced myself. Not wanting to ruin the first somewhat romantic gesture VinnieBoomBa had ever attempted, I told myself Squeedlefish, you can do this! Be strong! I felt noble and empowered and transcendent. And then the waiter set my lobster plate in front of me - and then he TURNED the plate so the lobster faced me and the lobster's antennae, which draped well over the edge of the plate, scooted along the table cloth in little jumpy motions and looked ALIVE and MOVING and I burst into tears - really, burst! - and jumped out of my chair and told VinnieBoomBa to eat both of them and order me some crackers and I ran to the ladies room and had a little mini-freakout. =big sigh= Wow, just the memory is traumatic. Or was it the memory of VinnieBoomBa? Whatever. I'm calming down now, thanks.

I guess I should admit that I have problems with meat altogether. I can't eat anything that looks like what it is. Cornish game hen? No way. It's a whole little animal for the love of God! Rare meat? Rare as in red as in warm blood? No no no. Give me the overcooked dried out hockey puck of a burger any time. In fact, ground beef is the best meat of all because it doesn't look like dead animal from which it sprang. And I can eat eggs but only if I don't start thinking about it. Eggs, unborn chickens, chicken moms who lost egg babies, potential life destroyed for my dining pleasure...you know. The usual.

So, what are the charming idiosyncratic quirks that make YOU special?