Neighborhood Paranoia

I'm starting to suspect that the people across the street from me purposely and maliciously keep their window shades open to different levels just to make me anxious every time I look out the window.

I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and pretend they aren't aware of the problems they're causing, but let's be serious. You can't have your window shades open to such dramatically different levels and not know it. It's anarchy, and it must end.

In addition, I also believe our garbage collectors and landscaping company have entered into a conspiracy to oust me from the neighborhood. Here is my evidence:

• Every Thursday (garbage day), my garbage can is left rolling through the streets like a tumbleweed, while all my neighbors' receptacles are lined up neatly along the curb.
• Once, last summer, the landscapers left their pruning shears on my patio. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seemed vaguely threatening.

I think I already have enough to build a good case, but I'll continue collecting evidence throughout the summer.

Irrational Fears

• Things with long arms (i.e. – aliens, spider monkeys, tripod robots from War of the Worlds)
• Parasites (i.e. – everything on Monsters Inside Me, most of which come from cats or Africa)
• Random things decaying around me (i.e. – my car, my skeleton)
• Butterflies (I like the idea, not the execution)
• Touching raw chicken (I go through a whole bottle of hand soap when I cook)
• Not having my windshield wipers on exactly the right setting when it rains (no further explanation needed, I assume this worries everyone)
• Sharks in swimming pools (no one expects it until it happens)
• Eyeballs (touching, watching other people touch, eye drops, contacts, thinking about, etc.)
• Apocalypses of any nature (zombie, epidemic, nuclear war, super storm, comet, Rapture [I assume I'll be left behind], etc.)
• Being abducted by aliens (in its own right, separate from the long arms thing)

Grocery Store Anxiety

Grocery shopping is a source of great anxiety for me. After reviewing my reasons, I’m sure you’ll see why.

1. I have a very strict and well-planned rotation for each grocery store I frequent. This allows me to hit all the important aisles, swing around to the dairy, pass through the frozen, and end my trip at the front of the store by the checkout. Every now and then, however, I screw up my rotation. This can play out in several calamitous ways:

• I end at the back of the store instead of the front. This forces me to double back through frozen to get to the checkout. It feels wrong.
• Very rarely, I forget something. Doubling back is not part of the rotation. I leave the store without that item.
• Turning mid-aisle to retrieve a forgotten item found in that same aisle is also considered doubling back. See above.
• Sometimes I find myself circling COUNTER CLOCKWISE through the store. I don’t even know how this happens. I don’t know who I am anymore.

2. Sometimes I accidentally sync up with someone who is clearly doing my same rotation. This forces me to either slow down or speed up to avoid walking with a stranger, wondering the whole time if I am required to make small talk or comment on the cleverness of their rotation pattern. Sometimes I just panic, abandon my cart, and try again the next day.

3. They are renovating one of the grocery stores I visit. That in and of itself is a problem, given my general abhorrence of change. This reno is especially troublesome, though, because they moved the wine section. I just figured out what kind of wine I like (it’s been a big year for me, beverage-wise – I also started drinking grown up coffee) and where it is kept. Now I need to relearn their wine organizational patterns and re-locate the one I like. They have been uncooperative with my requests for a schematic of the area.