I have what some may categorize as a mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's not the same form as my sister Michele has, where everything she wears must match something else that she's wearing, or else she can't wear it. Or that all of the cans in her pantry have to be facing forward, with the front of the label out, or else it bothers her highly.

No, I have a couple of other paranoias that are pretty odd. One is a paranoia of being late. I guess that one would stem from my childhood, where we were always late to wherever we were going because my stepmother was habitually late. It's not like they changed the time of the church services every week, so she's got no real excuse. But every Sunday, my sister and I (and later my brother and I) would be already buckled into the car with my father fuming in the driver's seat as my stepmother raced out the door, still putting on lipstick or attaching an earring.

It's not so much being late as it is missing something, as in a bus or the beginning of a movie. When I was in high school, I'd always end up waiting for ten or fifteen minutes out on the bus stop because I was so paranoid I would miss the bus. For good reason -- my stepmother always told me if I missed the bus, she wouldn't drive me and I'd have to walk to school. It was only a mile and a half or so to get there, but I usually walked home from school, and I certainly didn't have time to walk to school. Of course, then I would be late, and we're back to my paranoia about being late.

The other paranoia I have is of running out of something. I have pens that I have had since high school. I don't want to use them because I don't want to use them up. So I never run out of ink in a pen because I try not to use it all up.

The same applies to nearly everything I have. I hate to run out of something, so I will buy a replacement item way before I will run out because I am so paranoid. So if I get low on shampoo, then I will buy a new bottle around about a month before I need it. When I took the garbage out a couple days ago, I noticed that I only had one more bag left in the box, so I panicked slightly. Usually I would have bought bags a couple weeks ago so I would never run out.

I tend to have a lot of cans of beans and fruit, things I use a lot of, so I never run out between commissary trips. Prices here are so high in the civilian grocery stores that to me it doesn't make sense to go grab something I've run out of just to make dinner. For example, milk at Albertson's is $4.79 a gallon, where it's $2.42 at the commissary. Even that price is high at the commissary -- when I first moved here, it was $1.20 a gallon.

Fortunately I have the room for my OCD. I use some cabinets in my garage as my pantry, so I have plenty of room for cans and the like. But once I have this baby, I will probably run out of room! :o)