Holiday OCD

Well I can tell the holidays are now over - my OCD has calmed down.

The Holidays are generally pretty stressful for me, esp since I got laid off and have just been doing freelance. I can slip into these bizarre habits without even realizing it.

Like I went to Cliterati to hear the reading and had to stop by the grocery store to pick up a few things. I realized while shopping that my favorite yogurt was marked down to .39, which generally means I can get 6 (3-9=6). Not that that formula makes any sense at all, but it's just that there has to be some formula or reason for every little decision.

I also, got to the .99 frozen pizzas and usually means I get 3 (cause 3 goes into 9), but I actually only got 2.

I know we measure things in small victories sometimes, but I actually got a big thrill out of living dangerously and breaking the rules.

I finally have the gas pump thing licked. I used to have to always find the gas pump number that matched how much gas I wanted to get. For instance if I wanted $10 in gas, I'd have to go to pump #10. If that one was busy, I could go to pump #9 or $11, but I'd then have to get $9 or $11 worth of gas. I realized that had gotten out of hand though when I actually would find myself leaving a gas station and going down the street if a) only low # pumps were available (cause it didn't make sense to just get $1 of gas - duh) or b) only high # pumps were available (cause I couldn't get $18 dollars in my tank).

Funny how the mind works.

I even used to be that way with my poetry, I was a hopeless counter. Squeezing each piece into some bizzare meter like: 5-5-5-5, or 2-3-4-5, not that it had anything to do with the work, it's just that if I didn't make all the meter work, it drove me crazy.

A lot of people would probably find this strange, especially considering I'm such a laid back and relaxed person generally. I'm certainly not up in the leagues with the chronic house keepers (I wish) or the hand washers.

But if you ever open up my fridge and find some bizzare number of things, like 9 bottles of pancake syrup, or 12 jars of mustard -- you'll know I must have been having a bad day.