No, I'm not OCD (much)

OK, so, yeah. First, I wanna say that that last post was NOT meant to worry anyone--it was definitely more along the lines of me blowing off steam and losing emotional energy than anything else. I prolly ought to have made it private, but I forgot, and there you have it.

On to the more interesting stuff. I got back to my grandparents' house this afternoon after picking up our new house key from the realtor, and found myself, a few hours later, sitting here on the couch catching up with the world as it rains outside, having:

• Finished and put away three loads of wash.

• Cleaned up my room and packed up the stuff I'll be moving to the new house over the next week or so.

• Started a load of towels in the laundry.

• Cleaned the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms.

• Made every shiny surface and item in the house is as shiny as it can possibly be, and clean to boot.

• Vacuumed all the carpets.

• Swept and cleaned all the non-carpeted floors except the basement concrete.

• Oiled the hinges on a door that's been bugging me.

• Balanced my checkbook.

• Sharpened all of my pocketknives.

I maintain that I am not OCD. I am also not becoming Hannelore. I just started by finishing up last night's wash, and then things lead to each other, and so...

But I am of the firm belief that shiny things MUST be shiny, and sharp things MUST be sharp. Seriously. Haven't you ever looked at a shiny thing, like the faucet in your sink, and thought, "My, but that faucet used to be shiny and lent life and openness to the room. Now it's dull and drab, and the room is just kinda sad and dreary like this..."? Don't lie, you have. So, you know what I'm talking about. Shiny things need to be shiny or there's just something that isn't right in the world (besides papercuts, terrorists, dust mites, people on the internet, etc.,), and you're forced to fix the situation.

There's actually a more logically-valid (as if the above wasn't logical and valid enough) reason for sharp things to be sharp. In fact, there are three particular good reasons, and they are important enough that I'm gonna bust out the HTML:

1. Effort: Sharp things are easier to use if they are sharp.

2. Safety: Sharp things that are sharp allow you to use less force and have more control.

3. Recovery: Sharp things that truly are sharp cut a much cleaner path, thus allowing any inadvertent wounds to heal much more quickly and cleanly, frequently without scarring (Why do you think surgeons use obsidian scalpels? When it cleaves, it does so in such a way, and along such angles, that the resulting edge is really, really, really fucking sharp.)

Now, obviously, most people who deal with knives (well, OK, I'm pretty much only talking about the BSA here) don't really acknowledge that last one. However, it makes intuitive sense. It also may just be me and my mildly fatalistic ways (I figure that, IF I'm gonna do something stupid or risky, I wanna make sure that the only injurious possible outcome leads to an instantaneous death. I don't wanna lie around as a vegetable for the next thirty years, uh-uh.), but then again, it may just come from having been around knives and sharp things for over a decade (heh, it's so fun to be able to say that!) and having developed a keen (no pun intended) respect and understanding of them. It also probably helps that I carry one or two reminders of what a sharp edge can do to a body on my own person, and they are testaments to the rapidity of healing when dealt a blow by a truly sharp edge.

Bon Jovi is at the palace tonight, and no one told me. ::sad kitty::

On the other hand, there's no way I could justify the expense of tickets coming out of my own pocket (notice how I left it open for someone else to pay? ::clever kitty bats at a fresh ball of yarn::), so I guess it's good enough that 'CSX is apparently playing their entire collection of Bon Jovi hits tonight.