These habits of mine

I was just thinking about how my daily quirks rule me. I am mostly a creature of habit too. I am repetitive in the things I do because I find comfort in the repetition. I suspect everyone does the same to their own varying degrees. This Leaping Thought Wednesday is built out of my laundry list of quirks and habits.

1. I'm a food mixer. On my plate everything touches and I do not put a spoonful of anything into my mouth that does not at least contain a little bit of everything that I've served myself. This comes from my Latin American rice and beans mentality. Beans do not taste the same unless the rice is mixed in there. The taste of one enhances the other.

2. I cannot go a month without buying a new one of these small moleskin reporter notebooks to write in because I love how sturdy they are as well as the rubber band that helps me to keep loose notes and cards trapped inside. Over the years since I discovered them, I've unwittingly chronicled so much of what goes on with me on a daily basis into their pages that they almost read like a shorthand of my day to days.

3. If in the nut section of any grocery store, I always steal one whole almond without any feeling of guilt. Taking two however, is a different matter. Pilfering a second one makes me feel like a thief. Go figure the twisted mentality behind that particular rationale.

4. In the old days, I would never leave my house unless I was dressed to the nines. Since having my son, that attitude towards impeccability has changed considerably. I'm more relaxed about what I put on now. Jeans, an item of clothing which I hardly ever wore before (I know, it's bizarre), have become the survival staple of my closet. I own dozens of pairs whereas before, I had but two. One thing I still continue doing though is never to step out my door without some lipstick on. Somehow, a glossy color on my lips has become my condensed version of dressing to the nines. If I've got my lipstick on then I'm good to go.

5. Once I wake up, I rarely linger longer than five minutes in bed. My bed is a place for catching up with my zzzsss. Not a place for laying about. For that same reason, I am not a napping kind of person either. Every once in a while, if terribly tired, I might fall asleep during the day but otherwise, I only sleep at nighttime.

6. I'm fanatical about having clean hands. It is my Lady Macbeth complex. I wash and clean my hands so much that to prevent drying them out, I keep tubes of my favorite hand cream stashed all over the house. That way, I never have to go very far to moisturize. Otherwise, my hands might feel like sandpaper.

7. I take forever to return books to the library. That's because I cannot bear to let them go so, in order to delay the eventual parting, I renew and renew on-line until my renew button goes gray. That's a sign that the library troll has had his fill of letting me keep my newfound friends. I would like you to know that I do feel some measure of guilt for depriving others of what I am enjoying for longer than I should but, to be truthful, giving back books that do not belong to me, is something I do simply out of fear of getting into trouble. Were there no repercussions, I'd guess I'd be a book thief, a cookie monster of books.

8. Every morning, before my husband gets into his car and leaves for work, we repeat a daily mantra. It has no great length really, just a phrase I say and something M repeats back to me. I'm utterly convinced it keeps him safe and worry when for some reason we go without it. M plays along but he doesn't believe in it at all.

9. I dislike air turbulence. When in flight and the plane motion gets bad, I close my eyes and play a little word game my husband taught me to help take my mind off of the movements. In my head I juxtapose the letters in the names of states to deliberately mess them up. It goes something like this:

Massachusetts becomes Tamassuchetts
Vermont becomes Termonv
North Carolina becomes Corth Narolina

Most of the times I become so frightened that the names never end up the same but it doesn't matter, just having to concentrate on playing the mix up game gets me through the rough spots.

10. I read through several on-line newspapers every single morning. I always start with the BBC, then move on to the Telegraph and from there I progress to the LATimes and finally, to the Washington Post. The only paper newspaper that I peruse on a daily basis is my Wall Street Journal issue but usually, I read it sometime towards the end of my day. The journal is my closure paper not my starter one.

11. Speaking of closings, I will leave you now with an image of the green leaves and blue skies of Houston. It is lovely here today. A true springtime is what we are having. I'm aiming to enjoy every bit of it before the heat slams in and the humidity creeps back. From this Leaping Thought Wednesday to the next and in whatever little corner of the world you find yourself living in, may this same loveliness reign gracefully over your heads.

What do you think?

My son has a passion for string, for thread, for dental floss and for just about anything that can be stretched out and wound around in a trip-me-up fashion. One time, I came into my formal living room to discover that he had taken a carousel of thread and painstakingly gone around every single leg chair, sofa and table appendage in sight. He'd not stopped at one single circuit mind you, but done the whole carousel length's worth of the thread. It was a masterpiece of a web. How he managed to get it so intricate considering that he had to find his own way around in order to continue building, I do not know. Afterwards, he was thoughtful enough to bring me over and show me proudly what he'd accomplished.

That night, I waited until he'd fallen asleep to snip, snip and snip it all away. Though I couldn't bear to expose him to my destruction of his creation, that little episode taught me a valuable lesson: No more thread within his grubby-handed reach. Nevertheless he's quite a resourceful, not to mention observant, little boy. For instance, he noticed I would tie up the legs of whole chickens with cooking twine before putting them into the oven. When next I went to look for the twine, it was gone. At that time, I didn't put two and two together and just assumed I'd misplaced it in my drawers. But a few days after the spool went missing, R struck. On this occasion, I discovered a complicated construct around the toys in his bedroom. It was another spidery beauty with the unfortunate side effect of ruining my cooking twine. As I write, I'm mentally groaning at the nuisance his threading fascination poses for me, since I'm the one who ends up with the unenviable job of unraveling it all. I can imagine how you'll take this as a confirmation of how deficient I must be at child-like play.

Now having caught on to the dearth of string which afflicts our home, he is getting even more creative. The other day he knotted two bathrobe ties together and made a pull to shut his bedroom door. I found out about it after I heard the door close for what seemed like the fifteenth hundred time. There he was, opening and pulling it shut ceaselessly and without tiring. I wonder what he got out of that experiment. Hopefully more than just my earful of door closings. Here are some photos to show you what he did just last week with a metal tape measure he found in yet another kitchen drawer. I was somewhat worried that he'd made that particular discovery because tape measures of this kind can cut with their sharp edges. He was fine though. Happy to show me this latest inventive effort. You think he might go into an engineering or bridge-building career? Perhaps something architecturally oriented? I'll let you tell me what you make of it all. Also, do you have any ideas about what kinds of toys I might purchase for him that do not involve beading nor bracelet making? I'm all ears for your advice.


Oh! Before I go, here are some photos of the flowers I bought this morning and the arrangement I made out of them. As you can see, I'm into building too. I thought it was charming. Not too stiff and just haphazard enough to fit the spirit of this gorgeous spring weather we are enjoying in Houston today . To those of you still under the mantle of winter, may it remind you of what is to come. In all cheerfulness, have a happy Saturday and a fabulous weekend. That wish goes double for Cce and Louise. Thinking of you guys. Milena.