Some think I have a form of OCD. They notice that I have to do things in a cer­tain way. These things aren’t exact­ly debil­i­tat­ing to the point of being con­sid­ered dis­or­ders, but they’re big enough for peo­ple to give me a teas­ing now and then.

I have to sleep with the end of the blan­kets at my feet. My duvet and cov­er are sep­a­rate, so the open­ing is at one end. It bugs the craaaaaaaaap out of me if it’s not at the bot­tom.

I always car­ry a few things with me. Lip balm (Labello brand), cell phone, iPod, lens cloth (to clean glass­es or cam­era), in addi­tion to the nor­mal wal­let and keys. If I have a bag, this list expands to include a note­book with pen, and a cam­era. I’m very uneasy with­out them. I look for pants with appro­pri­ate­ly sec­tioned pock­ets for this rea­son.

I wash my hands about 10–12 times over the course of a day. As a result, my hands dry out (which I also can’t stand) so I use Glaxal Base a cou­ple times a day, which is a per­fume-free, water-based lotion. It’s so hypoal­ler­genic and absorbent that they use it as a base for top­i­cal med­ica­tion.

I hate hav­ing an odd num­ber of eggs in my fridge. This may be due to the fact that I nev­er devi­ate from eat­ing two eggs in one sit­ting. If I ever cook an odd num­ber of eggs (maybe when a guest wants one or three), then I’m left with an odd num­ber of eggs that I’ll for­ev­er be try­ing to even out again.

I always walk to the beat of the song I’m lis­ten­ing to. Most songs are in com­mon time (4/4), which can be divid­ed or mul­ti­plied by two, so adjust­ing the walk­ing pace (in essence, two beats) is easy. Something based in 3 (such as Lamb’s album Fear of Fours) is less flex­i­ble. The only time I walk at my own pace is dur­ing songs with irreg­u­lar or chang­ing time sig­na­tures, like any pro­gres­sive rock album where I can’t even fig­ure out where the down beat is.

I have to wear slip­pers on tile or ceram­ic floors. I don’t know why.

I can’t lis­ten to an album out of order. There may be songs I don’t like in the album, and I’ll have no prob­lem skip­ping them, but I lis­ten to the rest in order.

I can’t stand things that are unsym­met­ri­cal. I know, there’s rea­son for asym­me­try, it’s designed that way, it serves a pur­pose, but I can’t stand it. I’ll nev­er buy EQ3 Off Centre din­ner­ware. There were a few sea­sons when the whole side-zip­per was “in” and I could­n’t buy any­thing from Tristan and America or Banana Republic.

I have to eat por­tions of food in a cer­tain way. This is only true for big meals with side and main dish­es. There’s an order: side dish (mashed pota­toes, or toast), side dish (corn, or egg), main dish (turkey, or bacon), rotat­ing between all three, but always sav­ing the main dish for the last bite. I find there’s a bet­ter con­trast with the food when you switch between dish­es. Flavours get lost when too much of the same thing is eat­en. This is as opposed to Aaron, who eats his side dish­es first, and then saves almost the entire­ty of his main dish for last.