I live in a yellow submarine.

 So if you want to see the neurotically obsessive part of me ramp up really quickly, let's talk office products.  I can spend, very sadly, up wards of an hours going round and round on whether to order a specific box of pens.  (I have a certain kind that I really really like:  uniball vision exact liquid ink rollerball pens, micropoint, black, .5mm.  You'd think that being really picky would make the process easy and painless, but no. . .)  My pen obsession began at the Boulderado.  The girl who I was taking over for in the sales office was very particular about these pens and what was written in black, blue and red.  I took over the Katie system when she left the office and have used it ever since.  (well, not so much the red, blue, black system - I tend to just stick with black.  Don't blame me - I come from a pen racist family as well:  my mother really does not care for writing with ink that's not blue. . ."it shows up better" she explains when she asks me to bring her a blue pen instead of the black one I first gave to her. . .)

It's really sad.  I've never seen this kind of neurosis emerge in myself until the last couple of months as my mission has been school readiness.  In August I drove between office supply stores many times anxiety-ridden about the best binder to get and how to best color coordinate my planner, folder and notebooks with the perfect binder.  (Mom, this is where you probably laugh to yourself about what a drama case I am, but I'm being serious here.  I turn into a madwoman.)

Today Jana and I went out to run some errands. We made a (well, two) Office Depot stop(s). I needed to get a box of paper to replenish their dwindling supply and have more on hand for the rest of the semester. No joke, I have gone through 2 XL ink cartridges and two packs of paper in less than two months. I told Philip tonight that we may seriously need to consider getting a laserjet printer that uses toner lest we go broke buying inkjet cartridges the next three years.

Okay. Paper. Simple enough. And, since I was there, I got file folders.  I currently have forty journal articles  organized in piles for my neuroanatomy paper on anorexia ("genetics", "atypical psychotics", "SSRIs", "fMRI studies + specific regions of the brain", "fMRI studies +body image", "general neruoanatomy" and "other"),  These piles have created a new layer of floor in my studying quadrant of the livingroom.  They needed a better home.  I decided on green folders to go with the binder/organizer/notebook scheme of green, black and white. So now we have 100 green file folders. . .

While we happened to be in the store(s) I decided I would see if I had any joy finding a highlighter. Now you need to understand that I abhor (again, not even being overly dramatic) flourescent yellow highlighters. I refuse to use them. If I have to, I'll use pink. . . or orange. . . but I really really really really have a STRONG preference for regular, plain YELLOW highlighters. This has gone on in my life for some time because I have a memory from the night before my wedding of feeling quite panicked as in my 3 trips to Target that day I hadn't been able to find any plain yellow highlighters to pack with me for honeymoon reading (I know. . . I know. . . refrain from comments. . .  it was for highlighting in my Bible, and YES Bible reading did go on during the honeymoon. . .  no, NOT just Song of Solomon. . . really people, come on here. . .).

In August, I broke down and ordered a dozen yellow highlighters online (after much debate about store, quantity and brand). I was very careful to make sure the product number was identitcal to my current highlighter. Do you know what? Those LOSERS sent me a WHOLE PACKAGE of FLOURESCENT YELLOW highlighters. I sent them back.

I do NOT want this greeny scary gross yellow mess.

I want this pleasant, golden yellow hue that does not burn my retinas.

I have not made another attempt at finding a good highlighter since the last big dissapointment, but my last yellow one is drying out quickly so I'm getting kind of desperate.  The pressure was on to secure a replacement today as this is a loads-of-reading (read: lots of highlighting) weekend.  I looked high and low at each store today but the only yellow highlighters in the whole building were yucky flourescent ones.  Lame.

I was very cross.

So I came back to the house and looked online for suitable highlighters.  I had my shopping cart ready to check out only to find that they wanted to charge me $9.95 for shipping.  Uh, I don't think so.  How about pickup in store?  No, since the store doesn't CARRY them they won't ship them to the store for me to pick up.  I had to make my jusself get off the stupid website(s), get back to studying and forget about it for now. 

I have real issues.

But I bet you feel better about yourself after reading this.
And that's okay ;)