Licked

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who feel the need to lick their finger before turning a page, and those who do not. I suppose technically there's people who believe that there's two kinds of people, and people who actually know there are many more. There's also people who smell their clothes before putting them on, and those who already know all the clothes in their wardrobes are clean. I don't know where these groups intersect.

When I turn a page, I do not first lick my finger. I wash my hands regularly, I have a keen knowledge of where my hands have been, and yet I still do not lick my finger. I have always found that the pages turn without that being necessary. I cannot help considering it "icky" to have saliva on the pages of anything I'm going to read.

Mum is a licker, dad is not a licker. They should have known from the start that it would only end in tears.

I do not judge lickers. There's nothing necessarily wrong with being a licker. Some of my best friends are liquors. So long as you don't want me to handle your document after it's been moistened that's just fine.

It's also important to note that some things are OK to lick. Envelopes are fine, so are stamps, lollipops, and the tops from yogurt pots. It's OK to lick your fingers if there's food stuck to them, though, in most cases this should be done with minimum fuss and no seductive gazes at people across from you.
Especially if you're a guy. And/or in your 40s. And/or clinically obese. In which case failure to comply may mean that I'm forced to sterilize you. Sorry, it's the rules.

It's OK to lick salt from your hand before a shot of tequila (another excellent liquor, possibly because it makes other kinds more bearable). Though you should only do so if there's lime wedges handy.

Perhaps I am more of a sucker than a licker. It seems that anything that can be licked is likely to be better sucked. At least that's what I'm told. It's certainly true for the lollipop.

Domesticated Violence

I am exceptionally handy around the flat. I can change all the light bulbs I can reach (read: the one in my desk lamp). I can get things from high shelves if I stand on a chair. I know how to clog up a drain. I do most of the washing up out of the goodness of my heart, OCD and having found beetles in the past has nothing to do with it.

I cannot wear a skirt again until the giant bruise on my knee heals. Unless I go out and buy more dark tights. All my dark tights got holes in them, I don't know how his happened, but I suspect that drinking more rum would help make sure it never happened again. I hear these things cancel out.

I finally got my bravery back after the last kitchen fiasco. I had cleaned the curtain, dried it, and folded it up neatly in one of the cupboards. But it bothered me, it needed to be back in its proper place.

I knew the step ladder was not safe for people who weigh more than the average seven-year-old, but I'd skipped breakfast and lunch. I figured it was worth the risk. In hindsight I should probably not have tried it with heels, but they're so slimming.

I got to the fourth step before the ladders started to slip. I froze. It stopped. I took a deep breath and slowly started to move back down. Our windows are huge and the curtains are long. It caught round my heel and I missed the step completely. I twisted like a cat (only much more elegantly) and attempted to jump forwards off the ladder. My ankle caught the last rung. I landed on my knees.

Two seconds later, the ladders landed on me. I doubt my knee is the only thing that's bruised. But at least I didn't break a heel.

You'd think one of the guys would be a gentleman and fix this for me, but only if you'd never met them.

Nice and Clean

OCD comes in bursts. I'm not generally obsessive compulsive, apart from the odd tendency, the most obvious example being that I have to eat my food in the right order. It's impossible to know what that order will be until I am presented with the food, but it's very important anyway.

Today I spent five hours cleaning my kitchen. This may seem like typical OCD behaviour, but it's actually much more complicated than that. I do not often spend more than half an hour cleaning anything. This was sparked by an experience that I might never truly recover from.

About a month ago, my flatmate Gav accidentally pulled down one of the curtains in the kitchen. We tend not to close them anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. Today though, I decided it was about time someone put it back up. It had been left on the floor, and I picked it up to work out how I could do this. It was a little damp, but I figured there was no reason why it shouldn't be clean, and that it would dry when it was hanging in front of the window again.

I went to get the step ladders. I put them up. I gave them a push, and instantly decided that I was far to important to actually put any weight on them, and that I would wait until one of the boys came home. I decided to wash the curtain, just in case.

At this point I noticed that the floor where the curtain had been was a bit dusty-looking and could probably use cleaning. I moved the table out of the way to get a closer look. At this point the worst thing that's happened to me all week occurred.

I found an exoskeleton.

From some kind of bug.

With lots of legs.

I wretched. Then I cleaned for five hours. Muttering "nothing crawls in my kitchen," under my breath.

It's My Party

And I don't really feel like crying. Suddenly I'm 20, this didn't really sink in until I noticed that it changed automatically on my Last.fm profile. It's alright though, don't feel old yet, I happen to be the youngest of my flatmates, which helps a bit :-)

I've had plenty of birthday facebook messages too, which is nice. They tend to run along the lines of "Happy Birthday Becky! Have a great day! xxx"
But my sister's just says
"You're old."

I love my sister. She can't borrow any money for her Paris trip.

I've been OCD-ishly cleaning the flat. It's delightful, look, I even made a graph: