Spin Cycle: Quirks

After much reflection and the polling of family members, it appears I don’t have any major quirks, or at least interesting ones. It seems my quirks have been worn smooth from the constant compromising involved in working towards a greater good (moments of peace).

I asked my husband.

You get mad when the bed’s not made….

Hoping the last person out of bed makes it, so that I don’t get home at four in the afternoon to a rumplestilskin is a quirk. OK.

I asked my daughter.

It really bugs you when we don’t call when we’re supposed to or are coming home late.

Hm. If that’s a quirk then I’m heading for high ground.

I asked my son.

You don’t know how to tell when I’m joking. You get really pissed off when I call girls, especially Sister, bitches or ho’s.

Yeah. I’m mother of the year quirk.

When I asked my family for this information, I had to do a little explaining of the term quirk. So, they also offered these tidbits.

Husband always does his chores in the same way every time. When he drives someplace, once he decides on the route, he goes the same way, every time. When one of the children does a chore differently than he would do it, it drives him crazy.

My daughter and son both count things. All kinds of things. Like the number of steps to and from places in the house. They revealed more, but I was too busy wondering about my pack of crazies to take it in.

It all became clear as I was vacuuming on Monday. My husband was watching me. He informs me:

When I vacuum, I start upstairs. I do each room in rows so the lines are all straight. Then, when I do the stairs, I hold the vacuum so it does not mark where I’ve been. Once I get to the downstairs I start in the living room and work my way towards the utility room. He then gives me the exact order of each room downstairs.

So I ask.

Why are you telling me this?

Because it bugs me the way you are doing it. If you are going to vacuum (I will admit, he does it more often than me), you should do it the right way.

I look him straight in the eye.

When I vacuum, I like to mix it up. I do the rooms in a different order every time , otherwise I get bored. I try to hit the living room when a song on the CD player is a favorite, so I can take a break and play sing along, using the vacuum as my fake microphone.

He rolled his eyes and walked away, thinking I was being sarcastic. It kills him to know I was dead serious.

And I did not even take on my mother’s quirks in this post. But I will mention that when I cleaned out her place on my last visit, I recycled over 60 phone books that dated back into the 80’s…