Friday, September 2, 2011

Please Don't Be Like Me

I am a freak.

I am not content to be a freak of average proportions, no sir. I must aspire to be the Queen of Freaks, the Monarch of Madness, the Grand Poo-bah of all that is weird.  It is to your advantage to avoid using me as a role model for normalcy.

My evening started off well, but spiraled downward into an obsessive compulsive abyss. My son, Weston, turns thirteen today. I really want to say that he turns thirteen tomorrow, but since it is now 1:56 A.M. my OCD-ness requires that I say today.

Me: "Bad OCD-ness! Why don't you settle down and let me go to sleep?
OCD-ness: "Why, no! Don't you know you do your best work when you're in an OCD stupor?"
Me: " But I just wanna be normal! Waaaaah!"

I just want to go to bed at ten o'clock, like regular folks. But somewhere around 11:30, my brain magically rejuvenates, and I come up with all sorts of cool projects--projects that absolutely no how, no way, can wait until tomorrow. And why should they? If I just wait until midnight, tomorrow is today!

Which is exactly what happened tonight. I'm sitting there, like a normal mom, wrapping Weston's birthday present. Since he's turning thirteen, purchasing gifts has suddenly become more difficult. The toy stage has passed and he has entered the "everything-I-really-really-want-costs-at-least-$200" stage."  Since that is so not happening, I gave him some choices. He could either get presents only, money only, or a combination of the two--none of which would add up to $200.  He chose the combination.

I was wrapping his present, which, by the way is a really cool manly cordless drill--his first real power tool! (Men, you may grunt your approval here.) I was about to tuck some cash into the box, when the clock struck midnight and my brain said, "I'm feel like I've just had a Red Bull! Time to start a new project!" So I chose money origami.

Yes, you read correctly. I, who have never done origami in my life, started Googling "how to turn dollar bills into origami." At midnight. How hard can it be? Here a mountain fold, there a valley fold, and presto change-o, you have an elephant!

Except after 30 minutes of folding, I got to the part where it said, "Now, you can stand the elephant on the four legs."  My elephant didn't have any legs. One moment ( a very brief moment, Auntie M.) my picture looked exactly like the diagram, and the next moment the model elephant had legs! I got a little tear in my eye and had to make a decision. Do I unfold and start over? Do I just cut some legs out of another dollar bill and glue them on? Do I attempt another figure that requires less hand-eye coordination? I chose the latter.

For the next hour, I folded seven cute little money shirts. They weren't as hard as the elephant, but the downside was that I was seriously considering ironing them. Some of the bills were a little worn, which prevented the shirt from being as crisp as I would have liked. And I would just be ironing a "shirt"--nothing OCD about that, right?  Luckily, sanity prevailed.


Admit it, you want to plug in your iron, don't you?

The freakiest thing of all? When I finished, I had to go blog about it.



[I am not OCD enough to provide you with a step-by-step tutorial, much as you might want to stay up until 1:30 A.M. making your own adorable little polo shirts. I am kind enough to provide a link though!]

7 comments:

  1. LOL the whole way through this entry. Love the little shirts, wrinkled as they are. My brain often becomes alert when my head hits the pillow, but I don't get up and do creative stuff. I stay in bed, grousing because I can't sleep, now and then staring at the clock to see how much time has passed and thinking that if I go to sleep now I will still get xxxx many hours of sleep and I won't be a zombie tomorrow. Repeat, repeat....

    ReplyDelete
  2. I couldn't sleep last night either. Maybe I was worried that my cousin was going to make some cute little origami money shirts and they weren't going to have buttons....are they pullover shirts? Will they fit over money people's heads? Are there money pants? Do the shirts and pants have to match denomination? I hope I can sleep tonight....

    ReplyDelete
  3. By the way, HB to Weston.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Randi -

    Wikipedia has a whole 'portal' on origami techniques, that should keep you busy for awhile ;)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Origami

    I would think that part of the problem with folding money is that its technically made out of cotton fibers not paper, so wouldn't it naturally fold differently?

    Of course CG & I will (as well as Alex) tell you that Federal Reserve notes are not technically 'money' but fiat bank notes of debt, real money would be tangible assets backed up by something...

    God Bless,
    Adam

    ReplyDelete
  5. you have issues.. do you realize this? :) cute shirts! (I've done this with paper, must have been harder with money tho!)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Auntie M: I had a friend who once told me that if you wake up at night and can't get back to sleep, no matter what, don't look at the clock. He claimed that if you had no idea what time it was, you could get back to sleep faster. I have tried this and for me it ended up being true. Otherwise I would think, "Oh great. Even if I get back to sleep now, my alarm is going to go off in 45 minutes." Now I can kid myself that I have several more hours before I have to wake up and I fall back asleep faster. That's for the nights that I don't go to bed at 3:00 A.M. to begin with. :)

    Jill: It's obvious that we come from the same genetic pool. You are my twin in OCDness! I kept laughing about your comment all day long whenever I would think of it again. You need to blog. Creativity--sense of humor--cute kids--it would be bound to keep people happy. :)

    Adam: I followed your link and found some beautiful elaborate variations. Maybe by Weston's birthday next year I will have mastered them. :)

    Can you guess?: I have a sneaky suspicion. :) And yes, I have recently become aware of my issues. I am usually reminded about two o'clock in the afternoon when I can no longer keep my eyes open.

    ReplyDelete

You won't be paid for it, but at least you'll know that you have contributed intelligence to the universe...

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...