i am neurotic.

Whenever I’m eating a family dinner or something and there’s stuff in the middle such as salt, pepper, parmesan cheese, etc, I feel like I have to use all of it on my food. I feel guilty for not using the things that were purposely placed there.

I can’t wear hats. I’ve been told that I’m a hat person, and I like hats, but any time I go out into public wearing a hat I feel like I’m wearing a neon sign that says, “Look at me! I’m wearing a hat!” I even get embarrassed wearing them at baseball games, where I probably actually stand out because I’m the only one not wearing a hat.

Every school night I have to make sure all of my school things are in my book bag, my school clothes are picked out, and my sports clothes are in my duffel bag if they are not I will be bothered and I can’t fall asleep.

If I have something to do the next day, I always have to set an alarm. Even if I’m due in at work at 3pm I will still set an alarm just in case I happen to sleep really late. I also have to set the alarm an hour before I actually want to get up, so that just in case I fall back to sleep by accident, I still have ten snooze button presses to wake me up again. I also have to get up exactly one hour before I have to leave the house.

It’s really difficult cutting a hole in the middle of a roast beef sandwich.  I think it turned out well, but admittedly, it took two tries (two sandwiches) to cut the perfect hole.  This picture is one of many, many more from the book i am neurotic (and so are you).  Check out a copy today!

I have an uncontrollable urge to arrange things in perfect multiples. Say nine cans of cola have to be in three sets of three, and 12 apples in three sets of four, or four sets of three. 17 would be undesirable — I’d have to throw out that extra can of cola to make it a nice four sets of four. Even on a restless night, I count sheep in this fashion. I can’t possibly throw the odd sheep out, but I’ll make it jump over the fence in the fastest speed possible.

When I am home, I eat the same breakfast on Mondays & Thursdays (apple juice, cold cereal with sliced bananas, and coffee), Tuesdays & Fridays (tomato juice, hot oatmeal with sliced bananas, and coffee), Wednesdays & Saturdays (orange juice, frozen waffles or pancakes, and coffee), and on Sundays orange juice, two sunnyside eggs, two pieces of toast, and coffee. If I’m on vacation, I try to stick to this routine when possible.

Every morning when I curl my eyelashes, I have to keep the curler on my lashes for a count of 60 – it doesn’t matter if it actually takes me 60 seconds or not to count it; I just have to count to 60. Per eye.

I pride myself on my handwriting, and always receive a lot of complements for neatness. That being said, if I mess up while writing, I have to get a whole new sheet and start over. This is kind of time consuming when doing tests.