a little ocd

The time and care I put into choosing things...

every.     little.     thing.

...you would think I'm marrying all of it. I hate buyers remorse and insist on loving everything before I commit. Every object, every choice, no matter how life altering or completely insignificant it would be. Jon got his first taste of this in the little apartment where we started out, when our walls were bare for a year. Before I put anything on a wall I have to shop around, screen capture from websites, clip magazine photos, pick pieces I like. I ask Jon if he likes them, decide with our budget when said pieces can be acquired, think of ways to mimic the style on a dime, do measurements and check symmetry. I mock up the finished wall in Photoshop, ask Jon if he likes it, look at it for a few days to see if I second guess or still feel the same...then decorate. I bet you're exhausted if you read that.

It drove him nuts and he didn't understand why I couldn't just walk into a Target and pick something to fill up a space. Not going to happen! He since appreciates the method to my madness and the fact that I don't just spend left and right, but still makes fun of me when I call  from Bed Bath & Beyond after staring at two different colored shower curtains for fifteen minutes. "Wine or bone?" I asked him. He laughed "That's what she said? I don't know! Both! What the hell does this have to do with showers?" Okay yeah, that afternoon was pretty damn funny. He's great too, because he let's he me make these decisions but steps in at just the right time to tell me when it's time to let it go. Finding compromise in insanity. Then when I settle he jokes "Aww, why did have you pick that one?" and hugs me quickly with a laugh when my jaw drops.

Is this really that bizarre though? Part of me says I have a screw loose, but then I think wait, doesn't everyone do this? HGTV, hello? Or maybe not, oh well.

We dated our couch for 3 years at Crate & Barrel before we bought it. I remember telling the sales people "oh thank you, that's okay, we're just here to see our couch". We'd sit on it in different positions, run our hands all over it and narrow down colors from the book of samples. We weighed the pros and cons, looked up reviews and clean care instructions. We gazed at each other starry eyed and imagined curling up with a big blanket and books, and eventually family movie nights where we all would fit comfy on the same big couch. We fell in love. <sigh> With the couch, we were already in love of course.

I've done the same amount of research for everything from the suburb we live in (ranked top 3 for the last five years) to the last $7 shirt I purchased (I can't impulse buy anymore. Did enough of that from age 18-22 to make up for a lifetime) so more recently when it came time to pick out health insurance and care providers, I dug in hard.

Funny, we were extremely lucky that my husband's employer couldn't afford to put us on his insurance, because he let us pick our own. Ohhh boy. I gave myself a headache on multiple evenings pulling up and reading, re-reading all about the difference between HMO's and PPO's, deductibles and co-pays, exclusions and pre-existing conditions (which will hopefully be wiped out completely by 2014!) and reviews about each plan. Anthem, Summa, Kaiser, MedicalMutual (villains, villains, corporate villains...sorry). For one thing, this hurt to do anyways because I'm really, really against healthcare for profit. If you've actually ever sat and read the pages and pages of details with your health insurance plan and not felt sick to your stomach, you must not understand it fully. It's really just a matter of picking the best of the worst, and never really finding out how good or bad it is until you're desperately in need. I'm so, so thankful that we got to choose what we felt was the "best of the worst" for our situation. I got teary-eyed reading the new details added to the paperwork, that the Affordable Care Act has changed horrible rules of the recent past such as life caps, pre-existing conditions in children. Bravo. I got more teary-eyed realizing this was a big step on our baby bucket list, then again remembering what we've been through without insurance paying for my cancer scares the past couple of years, and how much it's held us back. I'm going to get political for two more seconds here: This Should Not Be A Luxury. I even felt bad the week after being accepted, sometimes still, that I have this now when I don't feel I deserve it anymore than the next living human being.

Moving on though, I had to pick a family doctor. So I picked up the Cleveland Magazine Best Doctors of 2012 issue, screen captured the list of highest rated doctors under our health plan and within a certain mile radius, read all about our city's big rivalry (Clinic vs University Hospitals, of course) and made a list of doctors who I could stalk on Google. Dammit if we're going to have this first time luxury that is healthcare, we're not going to settle on any doctor. We found a guy who has pages of awards, works with men, women and children, has a long list of specialties including back pain (husband) and breast health (me) and even YouTube videos so I could see if I liked his personality. Oh, the internets. What did anyone do before? I sent my request for an appointment and now it feels like waiting for a hot crush to circle Y or N.

What if he doesn't like us? What if we don't get a call to come in? 

Any other delightfully annoying people like me out there who obsessively review check, research or obsess about every choice they make? Anyone who just has something else that makes them annoying that they'd like to admit to? I'm baring my ridiculous soul, here.