As I sit here in my easy chair, fighting off the chill from our single pane windows with my grandma’s old comforter wrapped snugly around myself, I’m taking joy in the little things like watching Wheel of Fortune and listening to my little boy coo his heart out. Life is good. Jake has a new obsession with sucking on any type of cloth he can find…bibs, shirts, blankets, towels, whatever. I find it rather cute, but my sweet wife finds it revolting. She has a strange aversion to cotton against her teeth and seeing Jake happily chewing his bath towel covered in ducks is almost more than she can handle. It makes me think about the strange things that freak some of us out but don’t bother others in the slightest. Here’s another one:

I read alot and sometimes when I’m turning a page my fingernails will scrape against the paper. For some reason, it makes me shudder and want to stop reading almost everytime. Since I am given to fits of insanity, I will invariably become distracted by the thought and feeling of scraping the stupid page over and over again. Sometimes it leads to thoughts of another paper related faux pas of mine and I can’t get the idea of deep manilla envelope paper cuts between my fingers out of my head. I hate even writing about it and my fingers are tingling nervously as I type.

I could go on an on about things that make me cringe. Seeing someone turn an ankle on TV; hearing a fork scrape against a plate; thinking about biting my tongue off (strange, I know); thinking about having a splinter shoved under my toenails; thinking about shutting my finger in a car door; and the list goes on and on. So, I’ll put it to you: Do you have anything like chewing on socks or scraping a paper with your fingernail that really bugs you and gets under your skin? If so, tell the world all about it.

Before I go, here are a couple more recent pictures of Jake, who has apparently decided 7 pm is his fussy time of the day.