Can't help myself.... Bad Habits.... I'm running wild..... lost control......

I can't remember who sang that song (a Billy someone who had a terrible voice yet this song appears quite often in advertisements and movies). Along with morning breath, bottom burps and a heartbeat, we all have bad habits.

Mine are embarrassingly numerous and I'm sure that Love Chunks could quite easily remind me of the hundred-plus others that I haven't remembered. At face value, I'm clean, neatly dressed, inoffensive and reasonably personable. But - and it's a big BUT - I have many bad habits. I'm not proud of them but I'd like to think that they are the essential threads that connect together the different bits of material that form the patchwork quilt of ME. See, there's bad habit number one - shocking metaphors!

And from numbers two to infinity:

• Looking into my hanky after I've blown my nose into it. Disgusting yes, but irresistible. I don't quite know what I expect to find other than snot (or sometimes blood), but I just have to check. The same goes for bandaids or toenails blackened from repeated banging against the ends of my running shoes.
• Playing with that stretchy glue that magazines use to stick in the free makeup sachets. My poor six year old daughter has to endure the same old jokes each month when my subscriptions arrive in the letterbox. I peel them off, scrunch them up into balls and then oh-so-cleverly do a dramatic Aaaaaah Chooooooo and flick it out of my nostril on to whatever book my little one is reading. I'm sure it was hilarious the first time it happened.
• Making Milly the dog wear a Santa hat and matching red apron with white edging at Christmas time. It was the first and only time there's ever been an expression of anything other than love, joy or sleep on her face. The best description? Humiliation and endurance.
• Absent-mindedly picking out my eye boogers in public. It seems to be something I do when I think of it, and not when it's appropriate. Sorry, I'll try to cease and desist doing it in food halls.
• Entering every competition that's found on any packet, box, bottle, magazine or newspaper located within our house. It's costing the Plugger household a tiny fortune in stamps and 1900 calls but 'someday...over the rainbow.....', hope springs eternal.
• Avoiding the ironing basket until the over-flowing three week stage. When the clothes start migrating out of the laundry and into the living room and LC's reduced to wearing a woolly jumper from 1989 with his running shorts to work that's when I have to complete a marathon evening of ironing. And anyone who says that they can do it whilst watching a movie on TV is a liar or is willing to put up with missing every single little funny bit or emotive nuance and searing their fingers whilst pressing shirt collars.
• Two little words that should never even be thought of, let alone used or owned by a thirty-something who still believes that she's only fifty percent dag: Bed Socks.
• Telling my darling Love Chunks to "Have a nice day" when he leaves the house for work. I honestly do mean it, even though it sounds so yankee pukee suckee.
• Taking up hobbies that only strengthen my family's belief that I belong in a sheltered workshop. Recent activities including stringing up bead necklaces, paper mache bowls, painting with coloured pencils, wrapping up lucky dip prizes in newspaper and delivering school market flyers to every letter box in our suburb. Painting pet rocks is my next project.
• Dietary Dishonesty. Believing that if I follow a Kit Kat Chunky with an orange all fat, sugar and calories will be cancelled out.
• Talking at inappropriate times during moments of intimacy. With the sincerest of apologies to LC, some past blunders include: "Whoops, sorry - that fart just slipped out of its own accord!" and "I'll have to pluck out that hair on the side of your ear when we've finished here." Isn't he so lucky?
• Using my daughter for experiments. Please don't be alarmed, it's just for my face-painting rehearsals. "Is this a tiger you've done on me, Mum?...... Oh, sorry, I didn't know that you were going for a butterfly."
• Eating too many 'Ch' foods - chocolate, cherry ripes, chips (hot and cold), chewy nougats and caramels, chicken skin (from roasts or rotisseries), cheeses.....
• Gardening Denial. I love the fact that we have a front and back garden in this era of increasing 'medium density' living equating to a huge Georgian Box surrounded by 1 metre of courtyard. However I don't actually want to do anything to maintain said garden. "Whaddaya mean Sour Sobs don't make a nice centrepiece?"
• Using my little one as an excuse to go to McDonalds. "She's been a good girl all day; she wanted the happy meal toy and I couldn't just sit there like a dill without at least getting some fries, could I?"
• Embarrassing her by singing all of the ABC kids theme songs on the way to school and inserting her name in every one. "M-u-u-um! I am not Gordon the Garden Gnome, or Bottle Top Bill! Please stop, we're at the school gate now and Angus might hear you!"
• Leaving my mouthguard on the dishrack to dry. Look, it's been washed with toothpaste and hot water. It needs to dry somewhere.
• Adding a new soap to the soap-holder in the shower much too early. Look, if the current soap is 50% of its original size, it looks mean. I would hate the idea of having that skinny slice disappear up my butt crack never to return!
• Calling my beautiful daughter a 'Posset.' This term of endearment was coined on my daughter's second day of life outside the womb when the nurse used 'posset' to describe the little vomit-chuck that babies do immediately after sucking down milk. Like weetbix on an unrinsed cereal bowl, it's stuck ever since.
• And 'Boombah.' I'm not sure why. It's not meant to be mean, just cute.

Finally, I'm guilty of subjecting Love Chunks, our in-house chef and gourmand who cooks at least five of the seven evening meals per week, to my One Pot Specials when it's my turn. "Look, baked beans are the perfect food - they're an entire meal in themselves!" I can't hope to match his skills, but can hope that he at least gets to laugh with me. Or at me.