Meme: 6 Random Things About Me

Jo, over at A Majority of Two posted a meme and I am going to partake, 6 Random Things About Me 1. I am a Diet Coke addict. I can easily drink 6-12 cans a day. I try to stick to the caffeine free stuff. I am trying hard to keep to 2-3 cans a day and also drink more water, which I usually have lots of anyway, but it's usually more like 5 or 6. 2. I have a very specific routine that I follow when I go to bed, especially if I have to get to sleep by a certain time in order to be half-way alive for whatever I have to do the next day, like work! I wash my face, brush my teeth, put moisturizer on my face. I take a melatonin pill and drink an herbal "sleepy time" type of tea, due to my insomnia. I bring the cat to bed, and put on the bedside lamp, spritz myself with some lavender, turn on my CD of chanting/music to help lull me to sleep, read passages out of a couple of books on spirituality that I am following, write in my gratitude journal, turn off the light and go to sleep on my left side. I can't sleep on my right side due to a workplace injury I suffered which causes chronic and accute pain in my neck and shoulder. If I don't follow this routine I could easily lay awake in bed for hours. 3. My maternal great-grandfather, my mother's father's, father, was an artist's model in Belgium. I have a print of one of the paintings he modeled for. He was quite elderly and it is a copy of a painting of him sitting at a table, a cup of coffee in front of him, a pipe in his left hand and cast iron frying pan with 2 uncooked eggs in it on the table and his right hand resting on the table next to the pan. There is an elderly lady (presumably his wife, however she is not my great-grandmother, but another model) standing on the right side of the table, holding a loaf of bread against her bodice with her left hand and holding a knife and cutting it with her right hand. He is staring off into space and she is concentrating on the task at hand. There is a cuckoo-type clock on the wall behind them with chains and weights, at showing the time at 4:00. The only thing to indicate that it may be 4:00 am as opposed to 4:00 pm is the eggs in the frying pan. Although there's no good reason they couldn't have been eating eggs at 4:00 pm, except that it's unlikely that the workday would be complete at 4:00 pm, especially back in that time period, where manual labour was a far more significant and widespread way of life. He is a wizened man with a white goatee and looks a little bit like Colonel Sanders. He has a newsboy type cap in charcoal or black on his head and a red kerchief tied around his neck. He seems to be wearing an overcoat of some kind, which is button at the collar. She has white hair in a low bun at the back of her head, and is wearing a high-collared, long-sleeved black dress with a full skirt and a blue apron tied at the waist. This is another painting he modeled for, posing as a monk. 4. I am messy. And disorganized. I try not to be. But I am. I try to get things clean and organized at least once a week on Saturdays, but during the week, I have no ambition or energy to do anything but load the dishwasher and take out the garbage. 5. I love getting my nails done. I always have false/gel nails done in a French manicure fashion. I try to keep them short and serviceable, but I am vain in that way. 6. I love to buy books. When I go to a mall, it's not clothes that I can't keep from buying, but books. I have to be careful on Amazon. I could spend/have spent A LOT of money buying books. I'm getting better. I'm not a library person. I don't like the idea of hundreds of others pawing through the same book. I don't mind buying used, but then I'm sure that likely only one other person has read the book. I love to read for knowledge, for entertainment, just to pass the time. They get me out of awkward social situations. I like to bring books with me to read at lunch at work, so people won't talk to me, or if I have to eat out in public by myself so that I don't look bored or lonely sitting by myself. Books are my friends and a shield from the world. Even audio books do the same thing. When I worked in a factory I listed to them on my iPod and it discouraged people from making small-talk with me, so I didn't have to get drawn into their drama.