I Need to Get Something Straight
I have a confession.
I’m afraid of crooked pictures.
Stray parsley leaves on the kitchen floor.
My spaniel’s paw prints on the front window.
Speaking of an obsession with things that no well-adjusted person cares about, a non-centered vase in the middle of our dining room table makes me anxious.
And I will interrupt a meal to reposition the aforementioned table if it is not exactly underneath the midpoint of the ceiling light.
I’m not proud of this.
One time, I moved houses and within 24 hours had pictures hung, boxes flattened for recycling and hosted my parents for a lasagna dinner.
That’s a lie.
It’s happened every time I’ve moved. (Except the lasagna part. Sometimes I served pot roast.)
This clearly isn’t me. I’ve never met a moving box I couldn’t force into submission.
Credit: freepics
Do you know what it’s like to think, “It’s Tuesday. I should repaint the house to hide scuff marks only I notice.”?
To fight the urge to turn every coffee cup handle in the cabinet to face east?
To not require Post-It notes because nudging my potted plant three-eighths of an inch from its rightful spot provides the I-want-to-tear-my-face-off sensation that reminds me to book my car’s oil change?
I do.
Does your heart go slightly arrhythmic when the sofa cushion stripes are awry?
Mine does.
Oh, the humanity!
I’m burdened with a pathological need for everything to be exactly where/how I want it.
Being a control “connoisseur” makes me a terrible host.
“Are you done with that?” I’ll (sort of) ask while wrestling a half-full coffee cup from a guest’s hands so I can place it in the dishwasher — one step closer to restoring it to its rightful home in the cabinet. Handle facing east.
My husband — a man who never met a closet door he couldn’t leave a little more open than he found it — has no sympathy for my malady.
To his credit, he has offered to help me with chores. But we disagree about timelines.
I, for example, don’t want to wait until after sports season is done. When you follow all of them, the season is never done.
My husband argues that the laws of physics won’t allow him to meet my timeline of “yesterday.”
Anyhow, we both know it would be a waste of his time.
I constitutionally cannot stop myself from re-organizing the dishwasher whenever he remembers to load it. Seriously. How hard is it to separate the utensils!
Could I ever let go of my compulsive need for things to be just so?
Live my life, instead of living for the thrill of framed prints on the wall that are exactly equidistant between the ceiling and the wainscotting?
Let me get back to you on that.
Right after I use my laser measure to adjust the angle of my ottoman.
ThIs iS wHy We'Re FrIeNdS! 😄