None of the glasses in my kitchen cabinet match any more than two other glasses in said cabinet. The mugs too. I’ve done this on purpose. There is an order in which they must return to the cabinet, or they won’t all fit. I’m a little compulsive when it comes to loading the dishwasher, in my head there is a specific location for each dirty dish, and they must go where they belong. I believe I got this from my mother, who can fit more into a dishwasher than any other person I know.

I’m a closet FLY Lady fan. If you don’t know who FLY Lady is, you must go check out her late 90’s website. It’s all about loving yourself and your family by taking better care of yourself and your home. The intention is good, and she has helped lots of people, but the tone of her writing and the testimonials that her fans send in are schmaltzy and very middle America. FLY stands for Finally Loving Yourself, a concept I believe in, and yet am still turned off the level of sincerity with which FLY Lady and her people approach housecleaning.

For the ten minutes or so before I fall asleep each night, I snuggle with my beloved baby blanket, which isn’t even my original baby blanket, it’s a replacement that I bought at the thriftstore when I was 12, when the original finally disintegrated. My extended family used to joke when I was about 7 years old that I was going to take my blankie to college with me. I did. The appeal of the blankie, for me, rests in the acrylic satin with which the edges are bound. From the time I was young I would take this binding between two fingers (or my lips if the fingers were busy) and rub it back and forth. I called this practice “ribboning” (very original, I know) and to this day, I find it to be one of the most calming activities on the planet. The reason I kick the blankie out of bed at night is that I find the ribbon so tantalizing, that I my fingers keep reaching for it if it is still in bed with me. During the time my ex-boyfriend and I lived together, he came to accept the blankie.

When the books on the shelf across from my bed are uneven, I will lay there looking at them, willing them to move into a different configuration. My mind will move them over and over again, until I’m forced to get up out of bed and fix them.

I used to be addicted to “It’s a Miracle.” It’s a relatively cheesy show, with a more intense Christian bent than I typically can handle, on PAX, once hosted by Richard Thomas and now hosted by Roma Downy. I watched it a lot with my mom the six months I lived with my parents between college and moving to Philly. We would sing the theme song together every night at 11 pm, along with the show.

In the 4th grade, when I spent the night at my best friend Emily’s house, we would pretend to make our Barbie and Ken dolls have sex with each other. I never really liked Barbie and Ken, except for this purpose.

When I was a junior in high school, I asked a guy I liked to go to the prom with me, only I was so shy and embarrassed (what’s weird is that I’m not actually that shy), that I couldn’t help pin his boutonniere on, I hardly danced with him, and after the dance was over, I abandoned him at an after party (I was the driver that night) to go hang out with my friends. We haven’t spoke since.

I was kissed for the first time on stage, during a rehearsal of Bye Bye Birdie (I was Kim), when I was 12 years old, at fat camp. I was pretty certain, even then, that the guy I was kissing was gay. We were instructed to count “one-one hundred, two-one hundred, three”–all the way up to six, before we could break contact. Oddly enough, Lori Beth Denberg from the Nickelodeon show “All That” was also in this production.

I could go on and on, but just as I felt compelled to write this, I also now feel compelled to end it.