Monday 24 February 2014

Saturday Night!!!!

Original post title:  "A is for Anal" - I figured that it might bring too many unsavouries (or expectations) to the post.

Guess what I did last night????

Well, being a (still) young, red-blooded Canadian woman, I poured a glass of wine, did 125 burpees, pushups and situps,* and alphabetized our cd collection!

Ever since I bought my first two cds (George Michael's Faith and Madonna's Like a Prayer, which I still own, thank you very much), I have kept them in alphabetical order.**  They're easy to find, easy to store, and... um, what else do you need?  I also have my recipe box alphabetized, and my spice rack, which we were given after stalking it on a house hunting trip.  And for which we played an exciting game of Spice Rack Idol (see ya, turmeric!).  Anyhoo.  For this activity in compulsivity, the main challenge was deciding on the taxonomy, or how exactly to structure the organization.  Naturally, I settled on four sections:  Artists/Bands by Basic Alphabet, Various Artists, Soundtracks and Kids' Music), and alphabetized within each.  For example, is Elton John's last name REALLY "John"?  What about Harvey Danger?  Bif Naked?***

Go ahead and judge me for that, and for this:  the unalphabetized "chaos" that was our cd collection has been driving me insane for three and a half years.  I think I would make a fascinating study:  I mean, not only am I anal enough to want my cds organized into a structured taxonomy, but I'm also lazy enough that I hadn't done it again since we unpacked in October 2010...AND obsessive enough that I would think, almost every day, "I really need to take the time to alphabetize those."  My eyes would drift to the bookcase nightly, thinking, "Maybe tomorrow," followed by, "Where did I put Peter and the Wolf?  If they were alphabetized, I'd know."  Shirley, some university psych department somewhere would want to study me in depth:  Effects of Extreme Procrastination on Severe Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.  Maybe all the OCD people out there (kaff - Tracey****) just need to procrastinate more.  I could teach them how.

Suffice it to say that I now have a quiet humming sound of self-satisfaction, which ends in a nice little sigh, every time I look at the bookcase.  I haven't done it yet, but I could just walk up to it and grab some Tom Petty.  Or Right Said Fred, for that matter.  Or Joni Mitchell.  Or Sisquo.  Anyway, it was quite disturbing nice to review the diversity of our combined collections, and to remember that Chris and I had only 5 cds in common when we got married:  Sam Roberts, Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Nathalie Imbruglia, and Live.  Some might call this a "sign".  I choose to call it "complementary interests with low chance of duplication".  In anything.

Geez.  What am I going to do with myself next weekend?



* With a (stupid) goal of 10,000 of each by May 12, for No Good Reason, and being on track to fail miserably, just kill me.  Kill me now.

** To be fair, I didn't really need to alphabetize them when I only had two.  But I did anyway.

*** In case you're also an alphabet nerd, my solution was J, D, and B, respectively.  See you at the support group.

**** Tracey is sooooo OCD that she calls it "CDO", because then it's alphabetical.  See?  I am comparatively normal.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I swear, I had nothing to do with either of my daughters' obsessive tendencies - well, okay, my spices are in alphabetical order, but that's it - cd's, records, books are sort of in categories, 'very' sort of - I really don't know why my children are like that .....
Mommmmmm

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