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I have always been very observant of people.  I notice things like facial features, body shapes, personalities, traits and quirks.  When I mention them to people I know, they usually look at me like I’m crazy.  As I have gotten older, I have started taking inventory of my quirks and traits.  I have noted how I am in relationships and day to day interactions.  As I have come to realize how I am, I have often wondered if there is someone out there that shares the same coping mechanisms as me.  I have recently reconnected with a very close childhood friend who I grew up next door to when I was around 5 years old.  She moved away when I was 12 and I hadn’t seen or heard from her until a few years ago.  As we have grown closer and talked to each other about the past and present, I have come to realize, she is very much like me in many ways.  She is in a relationship with a sometimes verbally abusive husband and she deals with it in the same ways that I have in the past.  So now I am intrigued to know there is someone out there with my mannerisms and how they come to be this way.  Was it to do with their family environment growing up?  Was it to do with the friends they hung out with?  Was it to do with the time we spent together as kids?  I discount birth order because I am the oldest and she is the youngest.  I have started to quiz her on situations and ask what her thoughts are and how she would handle them to see how close our thinking is and it’s eerily similar.  So I have asked about her parents, although I knew them as a kid, I didn’t interact with them enough for them to have an impact on me.  So what was it about us growing up that after 30+ years of not being in contact, we are so similar in our mannerisms?  Are there only a few formative years during your childhood where your core personality is established and barring any traumatic events, that is who you end up being the rest of your life?  These are the questions that intrigue me, just in case any of your were wanting a glimpse into my mind.

How do you know you’re in love?  That age-old question.  To some people, it’s a feeling.  Whether it’s physical, emotional or even mental.  When they feel it, they know.  But for every person, there is a different personal feeling about knowing they are in love.  The air smells fresher.  The grass, greener.  The water, wetter.  For me, it’s when music starts to take on a life of it’s own.  When you can take a chorus or even a lyric and apply it to the one you weren’t sure you were in love with before the song came on.  That’s when I know.

So I just came home for a class reunion and stopped by to see my mom.  Her house was a disaster.  I spent 3 days cleaning it up.  My mom lives by herself in her mother’s former house.  As I was growing up, she always kept the house meticulously clean.  Nothing out of place or dusty.  When her and my father split, she moved into a house down the street.  She kept that house spotless.  A few years later, she moved into another house several miles away.  She kept that house spotless.  After her mother died, she purchased her house from her siblings and initially kept that house spotless.  But as the years have passed, she has started to let things go.  Now it’s to the point where I am worried about her well-being.  I want to ask her why she isn’t keeping her house clean anymore but I am not sure how to broach the subject.  During the time I was cleaning her house, I kept hoping she would say something, anything about the mess and give me a good segue into a conversation regarding it.  But she hasn’t said anything about it.  Also, she just recently had a quintuple bypass and is still recovering from that.  So I really don’t want to add stress to an already stressful situation thereby prolonging her recovery.  I only make it home a few times a year, so I don’t want her being right back in the same situation 6 months from now.  I am going back over tomorrow to finish up a few things and hopefully see a window into a difficult conversation.

I walked outside this morning to let the dogs out to a temperature of 61.  Mind you, this is a record low for this time of year where I live.  It was a refreshing change to be able to step outside first thing in the morning and not start instantly sweating.  But my enjoyment was quickly ruined by the smell of wood burning in a fireplace from a house in my neighborhood.  Just when I start to feel my hatred of stupid people lessen, they have to stoke that fire again.

So I received a letter from my home owner’s association stating that they appreciated my hard work in keeping my yard looking nice.  I have been living in this house for over 7 years and have never received such a letter from the HOA.  The reason I find it so puzzling is because during those 7 years, my yard has looked far better than it does this year, thanks to an attack of chinch bugs.  I guess what this means is that even though my yard doesn’t look great, it now simply looks better than the rest.  Of course this is very easy to see as I drive in and out of my subdivision every day.  While I do appreciate the fact that the HOA has decided to let me know that my yard is now better looking than the rest, this has had a strange affect on my weekly yard maintenance.  I now find that things that I might have let slide for a week are impossible for me to walk away from.  So while I feel good that someone noticed my hard work, I now feel like I have to hold myself to a higher standard.  So I guess the moral of the story is ‘be careful what you wish for’.

I thought this was a site for gymnasts.