Idiosyncratic

I am eccentric.

(readers clutch their pearls and gasp, "No!")

Yes, it's true.  I have several habits and trains of thought that range from the amusingly odd to straight-up bananas.  So I decided to spend some of my me time on this, our Christmas Eve Day of 2011, illustrating some of these quirks in hopes that you will find them amusing.  Because that's the ultimate way to evade the laughing-with-or-at-you quandary: make yourself the joke before anyone else has a chance to!

1. My beloved space heater
I have written of my unnatural and abiding love for our space heater before.  But I don't think I made it quite clear how obsessively attached I am.  Like all my quirks, I try to suppress it at first.  When Space Heater time comes, at first, I try to be calm about the space heater.

I do whatever I'm doing and try to maintain a respectable distance from the heater.  "Leaving room for Jesus," so to speak.  But then the warmth starts to speak to me...

And before I know it, I'm practically smothering the space heater, soaking up all that coil-heated air for myself.

2. Sleep aid - soothing television

A lot of people use television to help lull themselves to sleep.  If it's a typical night and I just need to watch some TV to quiet my mind and relax, I'll just flip on a good show and enjoy.  But on nights when the slumber is evasive, I can't use just any old TV show because it will only give my brain something to focus on while keeping me awake (rather than what it does when I can't sleep and don't have the TV on: go to dark and scary places like "What if a tractor-trailer full of Karo syrup is driving in front of me and goes out of control and flips over on top of me?")  So for those nights, I find the only effective sedative is Jewelry Television.

The commentary is usually grating, so I'll turn the volume way down and just watch the pretty gems and jewelry items spin around on that turntable and sparkle under all the lights.  Sometimes something vaguely exciting happens, like when one of the presenters is trying to get a loose gem to lay right and can't seem to pick it up with the special gemstone tweezers.  But mostly, it's just a parade of glittery avarice and before I know it, I'm to the point of sleepiness where the TV being on is annoying and I'm ready to sleep.

There is one other channel that works too, but it's one of those special channels that you have to have the more expensive TV package to get on your TV or a paid subscription to get online (that may have changed, but I don't feel like going and looking right now.)  But our TV company gives free previews of channels that are normally unavailable on a monthly basis and every now and then, this one comes up for a free preview: BabyFirst TV.  The nighttime programming is intended to help infants go to sleep, so it's a constant run of soothing music and slowly moving imagery.  About once an hour, they may show something that tempts the little babies to think:

...but mostly, it's just public-domain classical pieces and round computer-animated animals floating around on the screen.  Thank goodness we had a free preview of this while I was student teaching, or I might never have slept for that entire semester.

3. Dancing in the dark (not to be confused with various songs to that effect)
I have always enjoyed music and have also always had a vivid and active imagination.  So I write things, I draw things, I play things on the piano, and suchlike, but sometimes that is simply not enough.  Sometimes, I need to go and dance around and pace and actually see things in my mind's eye, or act things out.  As a child, I would just grab whichever portable music device I had at the time and do this anywhere, anytime.  The backyard dog pen that we didn't use, a random bedroom, a hallway...as long as I had some space, I was cool.  I did notice that darkness made it easier to visualize what I was thinking about, but I didn't need it, per se.  Then I got to my early teens and my Self-Consciousness lobe sprouted, somewhat hurried along by an instance of my mother opening my door to see what I was doing and my not noticing her until after 3 minutes of wild gesticulating and mouthing random words, only to turn around and find her doubled over in laughter.  And as I got even older, it became harder and harder to take myself out of the real world and into my pretend one.  College was really hard, because I would start to try to put myself in a time and place and couldn't get anywhere because there was all this yellow light shining through the window from all the streetlights, as if to say, "You're not really there.  You're here.  Being weird."  But I couldn't just up and stop - it's part of my brain's creative process.  It's how my brain metabolizes ideas.  So now, when I need some idea-moving creative time, I have to make sure my space is really and truly dark at all times.  First of all, so I can really take myself out of reality and let my mind wander freely.  And also so I know immediately when someone is trying to crash my party.

  It's nearly Pavlovian, the way I freeze when that shaft of light comes through the room when the door is opened...Andrew, ever the problem solver, has taken to blinking a light at the door rather than opening it, so that I'm less startled.  We are nothing if not compatible.

4. My battle with the grocery store conveyor belt
You know that little food treadmill that you load your groceries onto so the cashier can ring them up?  If I take too much time in between loading groceries onto it, I end up with a blank space.  Which is inefficient and also super annoying.

5. The power struggle of fitted sheets
Whenever it's time to put sheets on the bed, I want to either do it myself or not do it at all.  Because I hate the Fitted Sheet exchange that seems to happen whenever I put bedsheets on with someone: