Sporadic Obsessive Tendency

Over the past few weeks I've become increasingly aware of my tendency to obsess over things (hence the blog title contenders in my last post). I think I've been this way all my life, but it's intensified since I got married and began my career. This sporadic obsessive tendency, which I will refer to as "SOT," is not unlike the Obsessive Compulsive Disorders we're all familiar with. I automatically link OCD with images of housewives desperately cleaning the kitchen floor and all horizontal kitchen surfaces with powerful, skin dissolving cleaners five times a day. SOT cripples my ability to think of anything other than my hobby-du-jour. Right now I'm SOTting on buying/building/designing a house.

If you ask my parents, husband and brother, I've always been a little cuckoo over home plans. Yes, home plans. I've been "designing" my "dream" home in its various incarnations since I was eight years old. I don't know what it is about walk-in pantries and breakfast bars that turns my crank, but it's been doing it for twenty years. At one time I was even interested in pursuing an Architectural Degree, but this dream was eventually ousted by another obsession--teaching. (*As a side note, to demonstrate my actual (cuckoo?) love of teaching, the year I graduated from the Faculty of Education, I scoured yard sales and office supply stores looking for the perfect items and educational aids to outfit my primary classroom. I probably spent thousands of dollars loading up on "essentials," you know, like stickers and stamps, before being hired to the Secondary Panel, thus rendering all my Primary supplies useless. Other obsessions in my life include, but are not limited to, the following: guitar lessons, cake decorating, vegetable shaped salt and pepper shakers, Harry Potter, teacups, taking various courses-like the current Master's program I'm enrolled in--debt reduction, jewelery making, weight watchers, wedding planning, baby planning and dictionaries. Weird, I know).

Home plans are my current obsession because Phil and I are actually considering building in the next year, if all goes well financially. What's ironic is that I'm getting all shook up over cookie-cutter subdivision plans (which I swore I'd never build) that are far unlike the Craftsman style that is my all time favourite. When I think of Craftsman homes, I salivate imagining extra wide front doors, low slung roof lines, chunky mouldings and custom built-ins. I spend hours on the computer searching home plan sites for the perfect, unsubdivisionlike home, only to remind myself that to keep my dream of building alive, I'll have to submit to the four house styles I will have to choose from come next year. After driving by these homes every night for the last three weeks like a creepy stalker, Phil finally agreed to do a quick "walk through" of three different models. I must say, I was very impressed. Unfortunately, I think this brief tour had the opposite effect my husband was so subtly trying to achieve. My SOT increased, and the hours of talking about, writing about, researching and prospecting new homes has reached new heights. I even went to the library today to borrow their entire collection of house plan books, just in case one of them had a new plan that I hadn't seen on my favourite home plan websites (there weren't any, by the way).

And so, as I try to pry myself away from the computer screen to spend quality time with my husband and son, precious time that I've clouded with talk of walk-out basements and master ensuites, I will keep reminding myself that this, although an important life dream, can take a backseat to enjoying the moment with my handsome priorities.

Madcap Romantic, signing out.