i am neurotic.

I can only bite a Triscuit if my teeth are aligned with the direction of the grains on the cracker.

I have to have exactly 24 Black Warrior pencils in the pencil cup on my desk, and they all must face me so that I can read the writing on them. I also have a separate cup just for Uni-ball signo pens, of which there must be ten, and all of which must have the capped end pointing down.

before i pop my mp3 player’s earbuds on, i have to thoroughly investigate them to see which one is marked L for the left ear and R for the right. i stubbornly tried to not care one time and just put them on, but quickly ripped them out, discovering it REALLY irks me to not know.

Ever since I was little I have to make sure the Purple crayon isn’t next to the blue crayon. I thought that the blue and red crayon were in love and the purple was trying to steal blue away from red.

I place books with any color but black up – because, you can see the dust that collects on the books with black covers a lot more than the books with lighter colors. And, that scares me.

I cannot go to sleep without my slippers being right in front of my bed, ready for me to step in them right when I get out.

I’m a faithful customer to Starbucks Coffee and I go almost every morning. I always get the same drink no matter what the season is. Through summer to winter it’s always gotta be that non-fat green tea latte. But that’s not my neurosis. I HAVE TO HAVE the picture of their logo facing me and the front of the heat protective sleeve has to face me always or else i’ll go insane.

I work in an office with a packrat/hoarder boss and it drives me absolutely INSANE when I come to work Friday mornings to find that she has been sitting at my desk and ALL of my things are moved and in disarray! It then takes me at least 20 minutes of my morning to re-arrange all items on my desk back to where they should be in rank of frequency of use!

Before I go to sleep each night, I have to stuff a blanket under my door, and make sure there are absolutely no little gaps where anything could come in. There can be no places where I could even mistake a gap for a shadow, it has to be perfect. If I do not do this, I can’t sleep. I feel as though something will slip under my door during the night and hurt me.

If I am in a bookstore and pass a stack of books that are not aligned properly I have to stop and straighten them. I pretend to be browsing the books, so people don’t think I work there, or doing something odd.