[Susan McLean]

Okay, here are a couple of oddities: when I am hanging up handwashing to dry, I like to organize it by color, in a kind of spectrum with dark at one end and light at the other (reading left to right). When I am driving from Marshall, MN, to the airport in Sioux Falls, SD (90 miles away) I count deer carcasses by the side of the road. This is partly just to stay alert. I don't tend to count other roadkill. Go figure.

Susan

[Ken Brownlow]

I have a clothes line ocd, it's a rotating one and I have to place the clothes in an order, one pair of jeans on one side, one on the other side, same with work shirts etc, not just for weight balance, it has to look orderly, socks and jocks I'm not so fussy about, but I still like them orderly

I have another odd habit, after a few grisly crimes several years ago in this rural neighbourhood, if I didn't recognise a car I'd memorise the number plate, now I do it without thinking, the memory only lasts a few weeks then its gone.
Am I crazy, a latent fascist, or just being sensible.

[Jennifer Reeser]

My compulsion to clean and organize drives my mate crazy, Jayne. Most especially, my putting away his shoes, on the shoe-rack built in to our closet.

[Jayne Osborn]

Jen,
Welcome to my world! I'm always clearing up after my husband. He's a wonderful cook, but the kitchen looks like a war zone when he's finished. He never puts anything where it belongs... including his shoes, tools, dirty laundry, egg shells, vegetable peelings...
What drives me particularly nuts is when he opens snail mail; the envelopes are just left where he drops them. I'm not a ''clean freak'' but I shudder to think what our house would look like without my constant intervention.

It's heartening to see that many of my poetry pals are also slightly obsessive about things like washing lines, though
I always, always pair up socks from start to finish during the laundry process. Odd socks?? Nope, there aren't any in our house - ever.

Jayne

[Ken Brownlow]

Jayne

Thank you for starting this thread, I think it's cured me
this morning I hung out a load of washing and pegged em up straight out of the basket.

Now if I could just stop looking at number plates.

[Jennifer Reeser]

Originally Posted by Jayne Osborn

It's heartening to see that many of my poetry pals are also slightly obsessive about things like washing lines

Indeed, it is. Thanks for starting such a fun thread.

Jennifer

[Jayne Osborn]

Ken and Jen, (Hey, you're a rhyming couplet!)

I'm glad this thread took off; we're a quirky lot, aren't we?

But, Ken... cured??
Hmm... are you sure? I think you were simply having a defiant moment there, pegging the washing straight out of the basket! A plain sock here, jocks there, then a towel, a patterned sock... NOOOOOO!!!

I like making words out of number plates.
I have to use the letters in the order they appear on the plate, adding others in between to make the longest word I can. When my daughter was little we used to do this as a game, while I drove her seven miles to school every day, and it helped with her reading and spelling. (I always won, but that was another lesson she learned: life is competitive )

Jayne

[Jennifer Reeser]

Jayne, a little bit of a tangent, but...

My sister is a saint. Really, an angel among mere mortals. She is in the medical profession, and works and cares for really tough cases -- quadriplegics, Down Syndrome children, the terminally ill, retarded, etc.

She used to also teach the autistic. In her classroom, she says that when one would go "off the rails" occasionally, her solution was to throw a bucket of blocks onto the floor. This generally stopped their outbursts, as they compulsively busied themselves with gathering them up again!

[Mary Meriam]

By telling you this, I hope to be cured the way Ken was. I live 30 miles from the nearest sign of civilization. There's only one road from here to there, so I drive past the bank every time I go to town. The bank has one of those electric billboards that flashes announcements, including one flash that includes time, date, and temperature. I've become obsessed with seeing that one flash when I drive by, so much so, that I sometimes stop - in the middle of the road - to wait for it to show up. Dangerous, I know! Why do I need to see the temperature on the bank's electric billboard? Why why why?

[Jayne Osborn]

I know it's a cliché, but old habits die hard, Mary.

I can't answer "Why do I need to see the temperature on the bank's electric billboard?" but I'll just say that, as long as you check your rear view mirror and no other car is in sight for half a mile or so, then carry on with your obsession - but safely!

Whilst confession is good for the soul, to use another cliché, - just as it was with Ken, though, Mary, I don't really believe that you're ''cured'' simply by owning up to your odd behaviour here. Put it to the test next time you drive into town

Jayne