Weird Habits of the Obsessive Compulsive

Everybody has a little OCD in them - A liked the kitchen counters wiped down regularly, my mom washes her hands a lot and I...gulp...shave fabrics. Yes, I shave fabrics. You know those little fuzz busters you get for clothes? Well, when I first moved here, my male roommate had one. His girlfriend and I made fun of him unmercifully, but it's true that his sweaters always looked very nice.

Fast forward a few years later - some friends of mine did a really cool thing for my birthday - they all chipped in to give me some money and took me to the outlet mall where I was set loose to buy some things I'd always wanted. What do you know but that I bought my first fuzz buster. I loved it - I used it all the time and discovered that not only was it good for sweaters, but sometimes dress pants "pill," socks occasionally need a shave and that nothing is nicer than shaved sheets - okay, probably really expensive sheets never need a shave, but I like my sheets and they are oh so much softer after I shave all those little pills off.

That first buster died or the batteries died in it - I'll never know who went first (there was a big mess in the battery compartment), but after the move, I discovered that it was no longer working and it took me months to find a new one. Never you mind that that was in part because someone, who shall remain nameless (A), told me that Fred Meyer didn't carry them. Fred Meyer does carry them, though to my surprise, I could not find one at Target. What the heck, Target?

So, I'm reunited with my love of busting fuzz and believe me, it's very satisfying. I've already cleaned up most of my wardrobe and started on the bed the other night. Unfortunately, A was in the bed and told me to get myself and my wackadoo appliance OUT! Well, my side of the bed is done at any rate and the sheets feel oh so smooth. :)

Too Much Too Fast

Life comes at you fast, or so the commercial goes. So true - no small wonder it's a phrase used in advertising. We can relate to it. I want to take notes on every moment, every day, because it seems like there are always little things that I think, "oh yeah, that's going in the blog." Sometimes it's this blog, sometimes it's my work related blog and rarely, but occassionally, Chibo speaks up and wants something in his blog. I don't know how to keep up and keep it all straight.

I do actually email myself notes when I'm at work and thoughts occur to me, but if I'm out in the word, it's more challenging. As I note this, I realize that it's just possible that my concern about photography could apply here as well. I used to think that if one was overly concerned about taking photographs at a party or event, one might not fully participate in it - I think that could also be said about wanting to memorialize daily moments - when they're gone, they're gone. Lived, learned from and let go. It's okay to let some of them slide into forgetfulness - if they're really important, hopefully they'll come up again.

The other funny thing that comes to mind as I'm writing this up is that the challenge of writing a lot of things at once into the blog is really my own strange habit of each entry getting it's own day. I don't know if you've noticed that in reading, but it's a rare case that two entries have the same date. If they do, they were probably written the same day, but just because two entries don't have the same date most definately does NOT mean they weren't written on the same day - I write and change the dates all the time. It's just a strange habit, but I think it also prevents me from just blurting everything out. And I don't like to talk about multiple subjects in any entry - like, I want to talk about Howling Wolves, but I'm saving it for another entry.

It would be lucky if I still had "office hours" with an accessible computer - I'm surfing a lot of internet at work which gives me a lot of fodder and material for writing, but doesn't allow me to write about it until I get home. Because another oddity of my blogging habits is that I don't ever write a blog outside of the little blog posting box - I've never written an entry in Word or in my email or really even in my paper travel journal. The entries for which I use that journal usually just refer to my notes in that journal. Maybe that's what I should do - just keep a list of daily notes that I could write about later? Okay, now I'm just rambling. Good night.

Statistics

In addition to my unorthodox feelings about time, I make things up about statistics. I heard somewhere that __% of any given joke is actually truth and in fact, that this % is what makes the joke funny. I have forgotton the source as well as the value, so I fill it in at random. The number really doesn't make any difference, because in my experience, there has always been some part of any given joke that does, in fact, fall into that category.

Unfortunately, I've also forgotton what I was thinking that lead me to want to share that with you...there was some statistic I was going to tell...

What I Have Learned That I Need

I need a day off.

Just one.

Two days or a whole weekend is what most jobs allow, but I really need one day.

What I mean is that I need one day in which I am not required or suggested to accomplish anything. Just one day per week to watch TV, read a good book, eat whatever food comes to hand, play with the dog and maybe stay in my pajamas all day. As the weeks carry on and my schedule remains full with working at the store 4-5 days/week, business meetings and business related goings-on and many personal tasks, including my unfinished thesis (guilt, guilt, guilt), house cleaning and personal finance projects during my supposed days off, the days that refuel me are the ones where I don't accomplish anything. I thought I was tired and didn't have enough energy, but I think it's more like having a finite amount of accomplishment in a week. I took Wednesday off and watched TV on the computer, read a book and relaxed all day - it was wonderful.

I need a day off and I'm going to take it.

At least, most weeks, I'm going to take it. There are sometimes urgent decisions or actions needed and I have to get food and have clean underwear. But those basic needs met, I'm taking a day off each week, without even the goal of having fun, without even the goal of having no goals and without the expectation that I will not accomplish anything. It's just a day off - the only list allowed on that day is this one:

• no need to get anything done today
• it will keep til tomorrow
• this is not procrasination, it is nourishment
• no lists
• have a nice day

It's Just a Step to the Left, Let's Do the TIME WARP Again

Quirky. I wish I was, but I'm really not. It doesn't mean I don't have quirks - everybody does - it just means that the majority of my personality and character traits are not necessarily comprised of quirks.

Here's one for the literalists out there, though. In general, I use language very loosely, especially for one who likes definitions so much. One way in which I use language loosely is in regards to time. I like to say "the other day" as a description of when something happened. It wasn't necessarily the other day this weekend or even a day this week or month or year. "The other day" in my lexicon really refers to any day other than today. It's not so much that I am being deliberately secretive about when, exactly, a thing occurred, but more that I can't exactly remember and any event that I remember usually seems to have happened fairly recently.

There it is, one of the quirks that defines B...I wonder if that's part of the reason why I also pre-and post-date my blog entries?