It’s time for trick-or-treat again! Nights filled with costume-clad little ones, chocolate-induced sugar highs, and, naturally, anal retentive behavior.
My Mom was just reminding me tonight how, when I was little, I used to come home from trick-or-treating, set up shop on the living room floor, dump out all my candy, and SEPARATE IT INTO PILES SORTED BY CANDY TYPE.
Dudes. This problem is bigger than I thought.
I totally remember doing it, too. Milky Ways in one pile, Sweet Tarts in another, a pile of Powerhouse bars to give to my Dad (do they even make those anymore? I don’t remember what those had in them…it must’ve been filled with nuts, though, for me to have had such an aversion to them), Mounds bars to give to my sister, Reese’s peanut butter cups to give to my Mom, etc. etc. I mean, how hilarious is that? I can completely remember putting all of it back in my bag, too, after the organizational process (p.s., where the hell were you on the Excel thing in 1985, Microsoft?!?). I tried to keep everything with its little candy family and even put different bags within my trick-or-treat bag in order to keep the organization in tact.
Awesome.
If I hadn’t been so busy stuffing my face full of $100 Grand bars, I probably would have been creating a list to cross reference against the previous year’s candy…and creating a chart showing the correlation of type of candy collected to type of costume worn.
I’m kidding.
Kind of.
Posted on 29 October '08 by colorcodedc, under OCD, Sweet. 4 Comments.
I have a touch of OCD.
I know this about myself.
The WebMD site says a common symptom of OCD is the “need for order, symmetry or exactness.” Check, check, and…
…yes, check!
Ironically, I’ve moved in with a guy who has virtually no need for order in his life*. AT ALL. Imagine it….
No, sorry. I can’t either. I don’t get it.
*(Actually, I take that back. Oddly, he has the exact same love of spreadsheets that both my sister and I have. I mean, he keeps track of all the concerts he attends in an Excel spreadsheet!!! God love him. But, hang a towel back up after using it? Um, utter nonsense apparently).
It’s funny, too, because the very last thing my Mom said to me when we were saying goodbye before CK and I hit the Penske to drive down here. “Don’t drive him crazy,” she says. Good advice from the OCD creator herself!
And, I am trying. Seriously. I am. Stuff strewn about…and stuff out of place in general…just drives me absolutely CRAZY. And, I’m not even that clean a person. I’d rather do basically anything than scrub a floor or clean the shower (it’s why I need to invite guests over fairly frequently…the fear of embarrassment is about the only thing that can motivate me to break out the Scrubbing Bubbles). But, I have to have everything put away and in its right place. It’s a sickness, I know.
So, I’m working on not getting irritated by stuff that’s left out (I’m having “a sense of humor about it,” as my Mom suggested). I dutifully wander around the house and try to put away anything that’s getting under my skin (like, WHY must papers be left on the stove?? Fire hazard aside, it’s just freakin’ weird that it would be used as a storage space to begin with. And, why…WHY does the cell phone charger have to be permanently plugged into the wall with the cord dragging along on the floor right behind the chair where I sit to eat dinner so that my foot skids out from underneath me every SINGLE time I go to sit down there?!?!?!?! PLEASE ANSWER ME!!! Hoo, sorry. Holy run-on sentence, Batman).
Because I’m 100% sure the very fact that I’m putting this stuff away all the time is probably irritating the CRAP out of him (he’s got to be thinking, “Why, WHY does she have to put away my cell phone charger when I just have to get it out again in the morning to plug it into what must be the most super convenient location in the whole entire house?!? I don’t get it!”).
Like sands through the hourglass, my friends…
