a me meme

I have been tagged by the fantabulous Jen, which is a very good thing because A) I really like Jen, and B) my blog has been languishing. Why is so hard to write something every day, anyway? You’d think I have a life or something.

Jen wants to know Five Things About Me, so I sat down and thought about which five things people didn’t already know and came up with…not a whole lot. It’s not that I’ve shared everything, it’s that everything I came up with made me sound either like a freak or a total bore.

Which I guess I am. So, here goes nothing.

~I have a touch of OCD. Okay, okay. More than a touch. In fact, I have such a huge touch of OCD that:

• The throw pillows on my couch have to be alternating patterns. If two pillows with the same fabric are next to each other I have to fix them. Immediately.
• The chairs around my dining room table need to be lined up exactly right or I can’t sleep.
• I clean my kitchen floor every night. With hot water and Windex.
• The knick-knacks in my house need to be on a diagonal. When the people who clean my house are finished cleaning, I go through the whole house and re-align all the knick-knacks.
• Toothbrush holders go to the left of the sink, soap to the right. Always.
• Toilet paper goes OVER. Over, I say, and if it’s under I can’t pee until I fix it.
• Once I make the beds I don’t like anybody to sit on them. It makes the quilts look saggy and messy.
• I get anxious when in a room with naked windows. Put curtains up already. Please.
• The blankets I keep thrown “casually” on the couches are actually placed with great care. I even adjust the fringe if it doesn’t “look right.”
• Towels need to be folded a certain way and stacked according to size in the linen closest. I will refold and restack every last towel if they aren’t.
• Groceries need to “fit” in the cart, sort of like a puzzle. There will be no haphazard tossing of cereal boxes or random stacking of the produce.
• Shoes are never allowed in my house. I will make exceptions for service people like the plumber or the cable guy as long as it’s not raining, snowing, or mud season.
• Because I can’t sleep with socks on my feet (I’ll suffocate, you know) I don’t like it when my kids wear socks to bed (they’ll suffocate, you know). I don’t go in and take them off after they’re asleep or anything, I swear, but mostly I don’t have to worry about it because they totally know I hate it even though I don’t say anything to them about it, so they don’t wear socks to bed. They make fun of me and think I’m a nutcase (which, hello, I totally am), but they have naked feet in bed.
• Doors and drawers need to be closed. No closet doors ajar, no drawers with a corner of underwear sticking out from the top.
• In the warmer months, the backyard from the play area to the patio to the lawn to the pool area is cleaned up every night before dark.
• I can’t leave the house if it’s a mess because I can’t come home to chaos, so I schedule a 15 minute “straighten up” block into my getting ready to leave the house routine.
• The dog’s collar must “match” her fur and the season. Right now she’s wearing a royal blue collar with a celestial theme that looks “wintery” to me.

~ Despite my, um, quirks, I am a functioning adult because I’m not OCD about everything:

• Every closet in my house looks like an accident scene. I don’t color coordinate the clothes. In fact, the only attempt I make at keeping a neat closet is to put hats, gloves, mittens, scarves, and other cold-weather crap in a giant Rubbermaid bin in the coat closet.
• The pantry looks like a grocery store exploded in it.
• I do not alphabetize books, DVD’s, or CD’s.
• The mail basket is constantly overflowing.
• I stack magazines and catalogs on the counter in front of the toaster oven and they sit there for weeks.
• The windows almost always have dog schmutz on them and I don’t care.
• Speaking of the dog, she is allowed on all the furniture as long as she hasn’t just come in from playing outside in the rain.
• I don’t really want the cats on the kitchen counters, but I don’t freak out if I catch them up there.
• I’m not high-strung about germs. I mean, we wash our hands after we use the bathroom and before we eat, but I don’t carry anti-bacterial stuff with me everywhere and whip it out in ten-minute intervals.
• I absolutely loathe overly-matched/themed rooms. Every room in my house has a hodge-podge of stuff scattered around. Yeah, I like things on a diagonal, but I don’t care if the picture frames don’t match or if there’s a blue knick-knack in a red room.
• I have 3 kids. Chaos is normal and tends not to bother me too much…as long as they don’t sleep in their socks.

~I have green eyes and freckles.

~I make really yummy gravy (spaghetti sauce) and meatballs, and my chili ain’t so bad, either…but I can’t bake anything that isn’t a pie from scratch to save my life. Hell, I’m not even good at making brownies from a box. I almost always burn them no matter how careful I am not to.

~I am one of those annoying people who talks to her dog all.the.time. She gets a running commentary of what I’m doing and I tend to use that stupid high-pitched voice people use when they talk to a baby…”awww…hi, puppy, look, there’s a bird outside, where are the kids, are they in school? Find the kids, baby…find your toy…let’s go to the kitchen and find something for lunch…wanna go for a walk? Wanna go for a ride in car? Who’s a good girl? Who’s a smushy faced sweetie dog? Who’s my baby dog? Hi puppy! Hi! Are you wagging your tail? Awww…who’s a good baby dog? Good girl! I love my doggie!”

You all think I’m a total freak now, huh? Who wants to tell me about themselves so I'm not feeling all alone in Freakdom?

CCW? Jumper's girl? Jouette?

Anybody? Everybody! It's fun!