kgaffney's Journal

My quirks
This is my friend Mary's idea... :)

* Ground Rules: The first player of this "game" starts with the topic "5 weird habits of yours" and people who get tagged need to write an LJ entry about their 5 quirky habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names.

OK, Mary, here are SIX weird things about me that come to mind. There are many more. Many. Just ask my family.

(1) I am obsessed with having things perfect and can spot something out of whack a mile away. Pictures that are slightly crooked on a wall, and I mean slightly, drive me crazy. I'll sit in meetings at work and be looking over someone's shoulder at the frame and all I want to do is get up and straighten it. Sometimes I do at the end of the meeting, depending on who I'm meeting with. I usually state matter-a-factly "This has been driving me crazy."

(2) Another along the same line: I straighten wherever I am. If Mitch and I are in Wegmans and I'm just tagging along and following him down the aisle, I straighten shelves (pull items to the front, etc., like I did in my high school days as a grocery store clerk). In waiting rooms, like when I'm at the doctor's waiting for my name to be called, I walk around and straighten up magazine piles on the tables, or organize the toy section in the corner when no kids are around. Yeah, I'm a true weirdo but I can't stop myself. And maybe weirder: I don't mind admitting it.

(3) Cereal-eating: I never put milk and cereal in the bowl all at once. I hate soggy cereal. Actually any food that is supposed to be crunchy but isn't is gross to me. So with cereal I have always put milk in the bowl, then I pour in just enough cereal so I can eat it quickly before the sogginess kicks in. I do it over and over until I'm not hungry. I'm sure I eat way more cereal than I should at one sitting since there is no mechanism for portion control.

(4) When I'm really stressed, I talk to myself. The older I get, the less I care who hears me. A week or so ago, when I was at work walking down the hall, I was thinking hard about a project I was going to be working on that night (database evaluation, I believe was the big stressor). I decided mid-walk, mid-hall, that I should turn around and go to the restroom before I went back to my office. So without thinking, or caring who was behind me, I stopped short and said out loud to myself "Oh, I should go to the bathroom." Of course when I spun around there was a woman right behind who, luckily, I didn't know. I'm sure she thought I was a nut. Didn't phase me at all, though.

(5) (This is so similar to Nos. 1 and 2) Just about everything I own has a place. As a result, everything goes where it's supposed to and I rarely lose anything. Mitch, on the other hand, has no set places for anything so he's always looking for things, usually just as we're leaving the house. It makes me crazy.

(6) One last one, so that I can convince you, if I haven't already, that I'm neurotic. I love to clean. The bathroom, the kitchen, laundry. There's something therapeutic about it.

OK, so now I tag Christy, Travis, Shelly, Lisa and Mitch.

Advertisement