Numbers

Tawnie posted awhile ago about "quirks" that she had and asked everyone else to post some of theirs. Trust me, you don't have enough time to sit through my list. I would love to invite you into my world of OCD, but I think that I may scare some of you away. Instead, I'll give you a taste of what is going on inside of my head. And if I don't scare you all off, maybe someday I will share more. I love numbers and patterns. Order makes me happy. I am always thinking about numbers and the patterns that they create. Here are a few examples. My birthday is the 13th of May, 1979. 1-3-5-7-9. Pretty cool, huh? We had Kylie's ultrasound on the 20th of February, 2002. 20-02-2002. I didn't request that date either. I was due on the 9th of July with her, but I just KNEW that I would have her on the 13th, just like my birthday. I never vocalized it, because I did NOT want to go over, but in my gut I just knew it. And sure enough, she was born on the 13th. Then came Sadie. Jared birthday is on the 26th and I was determined that she would be born on the 26th. We induced on the 25th and the doctor said we'd have a baby that same day, but she got stuck and I pushed for almost an hour and a half before they used a vacuum to help get her out. She was born 9 MINUTES before the 26th. If I hadn't been so exhausted I seriously would have stalled to make her birthday the 26th. I considered it. I looked at that clock, and didn't know if I could hold out for 9 more minutes. Yes, I was in horrible pain and was supposed to be excitedly awaiting my new baby, and there I was thinking about how irritating it was that she wasn't going to be born on the 26th. Ask Jared, I talked about it several times while I was in labor. He told me I was NOT going to wait. We were married on 05/06/00. If you take each of those numbers and times them by two and then add two you get 12/14/02, which was the date that we were sealed in the temple. Again, this was not planned and I didn't realize it until months later. Both Jared and I have 5 siblings. His family has 5 boys, 1 girl, with the girl being the second to youngest. My family has 5 girls, 1 boy, with the boy being the second to oldest. Odd numbers dominate in both of our family birthdays. In his family both of his parents and all 6 kids are born in odd years. In my family both of my parents and 5 of the kids were born in odd years. On my side of the family we have birthdays in all of the odd months, 1-3-5-7-9-11 (and then there's one in December). In our immediate family the birthday months are 5-7-9-11 (with one in February). Jared's brothers Jeremy and Jacob share a birthday in November and his birthday is the week after. Their three spouses are me, Larkyn and Mindy. Mindy and I share a birthday on May 13th, and Larkyn's is the week before. You just can't plan these things! One thing that you can plan is your kid's names and I knew I wanted to name our baby Brynlie, but it really bothered my that all of us would have 5 letters in our names and she would have 7. I tried to get creative with the spelling, but I couldn't make it work. If we had named her something different it would have been because I wanted 5 letters instead of 7. But I loved the name Brynlie enough that we named her that anyway. Do you see now why I am afraid of letting you all inside my head? I also count things constantly. The numbers are usually forgotten as quickly as they are counted, but sometimes they stick. If I am driving down the road I probably couldn't tell you the model of any cars that I just passed, but I could tell you how many I passed. I know exactly how many times I threw up with each of my pregnancies. When I empty the dishwasher there are usually around 70-80 items in there, but we just got a new one, and now that number is closer to 100. When I load the laundry from the washer to the dryer a normal load takes me 8 or 9 handfuls to move over, but the big ones take about 12 handfuls. On average, I clean about 550 things when I clean my whole house. (Size doesn't matter...putting a shoe or toy or dirty shirt away counts as 1, vacuuming 1 room or emptying 1 garbage also counts as 1. Yes, I count as I clean. Go ahead and make fun.) So, have I lost any friends over this post? If so, please let me know so I can keep count...