I’d like to take a moment to talk about my newest sad and pathetic obsession.

Namely, these:

I’ve always been a big crossword fanatic. I inherit that from my Grandfather I think. My mother has told me stories that he sat in his favorite blanketed recliner chair every night with his crosswords and crossword dictionary (I had one once. They’re fantastic. Now like all people my age who don’t use paper products, I just use the internet to cheat).

But wait. These books are paper products.

Never mind.

I still like crossword puzzles though. I’m not even opposed to doing them in groups. I had some friends in college. Two of them worked at a computer shop. Every day the two non-employed ones would meet them for lunch and sit in Firehouse Subs doing crosswords together. See? I’m no crossword Nazi.

But I also have a tendency towards obsession. My last crossword phase was about seven years ago when I had a 5 month long crossword run. I was even using the computers at work to print 6 months worth of online puzzles at a time. Like, 2 reams of copy paper worth (sorry work people).

Now I’ve switched to variety word puzzles.

I think it all started last year during my initial thyroid treatments. I had to fly several times a week to an outer island for doctors appointments and they sold them in the airport shop. So I started with those. They’re published bi-monthly and I finally found a store outside the airport that sells them. Yippee.

But I noticed a trend. That there were certain puzzles I did first, and the rest I never touched. Like the stupid word find circle ones. Boring.

And the logic problem ones. The ones they put on the SATs and GREs. I was never good at the logic problems.

(Actually, I didn’t do so well on the SATs either. I literally got my period about 20 minutes into the test. I’m not making this up. 20 minutes into it. And <long dramatic pause> the test was held in an all-boys school. Yes. So, I was too busy pleading with the proctor to allow me to steal rolls of toilet paper - to care if Linda and Tom were wearing blue. And if Joe and Sally were in the bakery on Tuesday.

And my GREs? The test was held around the corner from a Cuban restaurant. Cuban restaurants where I live have little walk-up windows where you can buy 25 cent cups of Cortaditos. I had been up studying all night and thought a few of these would keep me awake. I also got 4 or 5 of the thimble-sized Coladas too just in case (If you have ever incorrectly assumed that because of the small size, drinking more than one at a time is acceptable, I pity you). By the time I sat down to take the test, I didn’t care WHETHERLINDAORTOWNWEREWEARINGBLUE or if JOEANDSALLYWEREINTHEBAKERYONTUESDAY!

I seriously don’t know how I was accepted into either college or graduate school after these).

*side note. I did a Google image search for ‘Cuban Colada’ and this picture was on page one of the results. I’m not kidding.

ANYWAY

So I’m now addicted to these puzzle books. I’m not sure if it’s health related or not. Obviously during my Icky Health Times (IHT from now on - not to be confused with the International Herald Tribune, my favorite newspaper), I’m not able to go sky-diving or jog around the block. But it is a bit obsessive.

Because now, instead of picking up a Variety Book twice a month, I discovered they sold actual books of JUST my favorite puzzles online. ENTIRE BOOKS OF JUST MY FAVORITE PUZZLES! Did I tell you? Entire books??

So now my life has become this:

The only problem is, the Penny Press fuckers charge a lot for shipping. Unless you don’t want to pay extra for shipping. And instead would like to wait 4-6 weeks for your books to arrive.

As you can probably already gather about my personality based on this story thus far, do you think it’s possible for me to wait 4-6 weeks for one of these books?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Good.

I didn’t think so.

So, if you don’t want to have to wait 4-6 weeks, you have another option. Paying for faster shipping. And their shipping costs per book is sometimes even higher than the cost of the book itself. So for 6 books? The total was $50.

FIFTY.

FIFTY DOLLARS.

FIFTY DOLLARS.

For 6 puzzle books.

And that didn’t stop me from making a second order.

Evil evil Penny Press fuckers. They’re like drug dealers. They know they can charge any amount knowing we’ll (read, I) come begging and pleading them for our (my) fix.

Puzzle Books = Crack
Penny Press = Crack Dealer named Ramon
Me = Crack Junky in Love With Ramon

What kills me even more is that when I did receive my last order, the shipping of the entire thing was only $7.50.

$7.50!!

And I paid like $25 for the shipping!

I actually, for the first time in my life, want to write them a strongly worded letter saying that they have completely overcharged me. That their shipping prices are absolutely unreasonable, that I’m paying three times the amount that should be charged, and unless they either a). immediately change their exorbitant shipping rates or b). refund me the tremendous difference of what I paid versus what they charged, I will no longer be ordering products from their company.

But we all know that’s not true.

Sigh.

So back to obsession.

I’m not entirely certain this is OCD behavior however.

I’m not exactly licking light switches. Or using straight edges to align my medicine cabinet items like my friend does.

But I do have my moments. Like when I brought my brand new puzzle to the beach with a friend, and she immediately GRABBED IT AND ROUGHLY BENT IT BACK ALONG THE SPINE. She even took her fist and SMOOTHED IT.

She SMOOTHED IT!!!

WITH HER FIST!

I about killed her.

But I am close to OCD with these books.

I do them everywhere.

EVERYWHERE.

Outside on my smoking perch (photos to come. I love my perch).
During my meetings.
In the bathroom (I know. Hush).
In the car at the drive-in Burger King window.

Everywhere.

For me it’s like knitting. And I say that because I kept getting evil glares from the ‘knitting woman’ while I was doing puzzles during a District Meeting recently. Listen lady, if you can knit, I can do these. Even though I’m blonde, I can walk and chew gum at the same time thank you very much (although. I do struggle with that. Hmm)

Anyway, here is where all this turns OCD.

It started with purchasing this:

A sliding folder system to be able to carry them around. I spent hours in the drug store deciding which was best.

In another I Swear I’m Not Making This Up moment - I went to a friend’s bag party a few weeks ago. She works for an up-scale handbag producer. They, like Mary Kay, market their bags through gatherings instead of the retail market. I’ll talk about the bags at another time because they’re FANTASTIC, but two people. TWO. Both who work for the company. Had to literally talk me out of buying a $95 designer bag simply because my puzzle books would fit into them.

I’m not kidding. They sat me down and one said:

Sweetie. I know I shouldn’t be talking you out of this, but Sweetie (she says Sweetie a lot), please rethink this. Do you really want to spend your disability check on a $95 bag just so you can fit puzzles in it?

I’m not kidding.

And worse, it took me another 45 minutes to finally admit that yes, I think they’re right.

I ended up getting a $2.00 tote bag from K-mart instead that worked just fine.

Again, I’m not making this up.

So then, I had to find the right writing implement. My poor fingers were getting bruised from the pencil. So I went on a mad hunt to find those rubber pencil grips.

You’d think there would be a wider market for rubber pencil grips. Granted, only 00.5% of the population still uses pencils. But still. There are all those school children and such.

It took me 6 stores until I finally found a store that sold them.

So I bought everything they sold:

Aren’t they pretty? Don’t they just glisten in the sunlight?

There are different types with different textures too, so I can mix and match.

And two people suggested I color coordinate them to the particular book I’m working on, or even better, color coordinating them to the outfit I’m wearing that day! (Brilliant! I wish I had thought of that. Of course I know they were being facetious, but because they know me, they might have been sadly serious).

So voilá:

(although I have yet to find a blue eraser top. Damn those eraser top vendors!)

I also go to the beach a lot these days. So I picked up a few mechanical pencils that don’t need sharpening:

The other three colors are packed away in a bag somewhere.

I also have two ‘Chubby Pencils’ for the more rugged of the puzzles, but they’re difficult to sharpen and I only use them on the ruggedest of the ruggedly rugged puzzles.

Speaking of pencil sharpeners, I do have a small one that sharpens both normal and the Chubby ones, but because I don’t take my obsessions lightly, I bought one of these:

Because no frighteningly pathetic obsessor could be complete without one of these.

So, there it is.

So, you know how on most essays there is a catch-phrase or sentence to summarize everything at the end?

Well, I’m not putting one.

Because frankly, all of a sudden I’m very very worried about myself.

And I need to go lie down.