Completion

I am a list lover.  The feeling I get as I cross off completed items and tasks is so satisfying to me.  Admittedly, I will often put things on a list just so that I can do them and cross them off.  Make Dinner?  Done.  Make dinner. Dishes. Write a blog.  See, so nice.  On the same line I have this little fetish, a fetish of completion.  I thoroughly enjoy finishing things.  By things I mean actual, tangible things.  I like to use a pen until every last drop of ink is gone, or hair spray until it can spray no more.  Now, I do not derive the same satisfaction if others helped me in the consumption of my thing.  Say, a jar of jelly.  We all use that, the whole family, so I couldn't care less about finishing it.

*As a little side note, this is all very amusing to me, as I have a wake of unfinished things and projects following me around.  How many walls have I begun to paint, only to stop half way through and leave it half done, for say, 3 years?  As much as I love to finish things, I leave a lot undone.  Maybe it is not finishing things that I love, but starting them...

Well, Japan is a pretty great place to have a fetish like mine.  Packaging of products here is very unlike the US.  Take cookies, crackers, and snacks as an example.  Most of these items are individually wrapped within the larger package.  A box of cookies will have 12 individually wrapped cookies inside.  Or, my favorite, all (inedible) things bottled.  I'm referring to cleaning supplies, shampoo, conditioner, soap.  Here, you buy a small bottle and when you run out, you buy a refill.  The refills are pouches that are easier to dispose of than bottles, like giant Capri Suns.  Do you know how awesome this is for me?  I love to use up all my laundry soap, just so that I can refill it!  Am I strange?  Maybe, but you have to take joy where you can find it.
Bottle of laundry soap of its' refill.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Surgery

I started my period when I was 11 years old.  I remember going to the nurses office at school that day because my lower back hurt so badly.  It felt like nothing I had ever felt before, but was a feeling I would become quite familiar with.  Imagine there being a bowling ball inside your body, resting on your tail bone.  It causes pressure just sitting there.  That was a good day.  The bad days were when that bowling ball was being ground into my back - from the inside trying to find a way out.  Later, when laboring with Lily, that same feeling was there.  Lily was upside down and her head was resting on my tailbone.  The contractions that drove it deeper into the bone were killers.  So all those years of imagining my inner bowling ball were not that far off! In those first few years of cycling I would often seek out the hardest surface I could find and just lay on it, trying to flatten my back into it.  Our living room floor usual...
Read more

$$Tokyo$$

If you google the most expensive cities to live in worldwide you'll find Tokyo somewhere in the top 10.  I looked at a few last night and Tokyo was actually in the top 3 on 5 of the lists.  Now, one list claimed that you'd have to shell out $5,000 to get a 2 bedroom apartment in Tokyo.  I'm sure there are plenty of such apartments, but there are also less expensive ones so you can't believe everything you read. But, it is true.  Living here is very expensive.  We rent an 860 ft2 apartment for approximately $1100 a month.  If we want to rent a parking space that is another $115 a month.  Our utilities, including internet but with no cable, are over $400 a month.  All that for utilities and our apartment does not even have central air or heat!  Groceries, gas, train tickets, they all add up too of course.  Groceries vary in price from store to store and season to season, but it is not uncommon to see 4 apples for $6 or a quart of milk fo...
Read more

Parenting is not for the Timid - This is my Biggest and Worst

Parenting brings obstacles and challenges like none that we've ever dealt with before.  My first was when my son was born.  He was the most difficult baby I'd ever come across, and I got to be with him all the time .  I remember how defeated and discouraged I was, and how I thought to myself, "I can't do this.  I can't parent this child, make him happy, stay sane.  I don't even want to".  I didn't know how I was going to get through his infancy and this obstacle felt like the greatest obstacle of my life. We got through it, I got through it.  Time passed and allowed me to forget the depth of the struggle so that when the next challenge arose, that one felt like a new biggest and worst.  The new challenge was now the thing that was going to end all civilized thought in my head.  Again, we got through.  Time and again, challenges, the biggest and worst, have arisen.  Each time I have thought, "How? What am I supposed to do with this...
Read more