oops, my neurosis is showing...

Like I told you here, I looove the IG account @averageparentproblems. But the black header & footer that @mommyshorts uses on @averageparentproblems just didn't go with the natural lighting & light color palette with touches of pastel or bright pinks of the @insta2yearold sceenshots in my post. 

So in this post, I'm sharing some of @averageparentproblems' hilarious posts that didn't make the cut in my original blogpost. 

There are other even funnier posts, but I could only bring myself to include those with black accents in the photos to go with the standard black header & footer. 

I couldn't pick posts with natural, diffused lighting because I personally feel they don't go with a black frame.

I picked photos that probably used fluorescent, halogen or incandescent lighting so the shadows go with the black frame (This is probably why @mommyshorts picked that black frame... because these harsh lights are common at home where those average parent problems usually take place... especially since the photos are crowd-sourced). 

Yes, my neurosis is showing again. Gah!

Photos are screenshots of @averageparentproblems' IG posts.

Click here for the of-dots-&-things version of this post. Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing... series.

oops, my neurosis is showing...

When I'm in line at the elevator and I watch the throng of people in line before me go into the elevator, I tend to think of that old game Tetris. I imagine myself arranging the people so there wouldn't be wasted spaces inside the elevator... so I could get in front of the line faster.

But when I'm inside the elevator with a different throng of people, I shudder at the idea of a perfect Tetris formation. 

Because that would mean we'd fit so well, the strangers around me would be touching me. Ugh! (And I say "ugh" because I've been jammed against sweaty strangers in the past). 

When I'm inside the elevator, I'd prefer to be in a game of Battleship than Tetris. Do you remember Battleship? Each ship stays in its own square of the grid. No two ships can occupy the same square. Oh, how I wish that could be so in the elevator at my office. I would love for the people riding up with me to be at an appropriate distance from me since everyone needs to be alone in each square of the Battleship -er, elevator, grid!

Hey, since I'm wishing anyway, might as well wish I were Pacman inside the elevator chomping away all the pellets and ghosts so I'd end up alone in the elevator to my floor. 

Hmmm, actually, might be better for the elevator to be a Space Invaders game so I don't need to ingest (Remember, I didn't even want to touch) those strangers! 

Shooting them from afar would be way better.

Yes, I have the craziest thoughts while in the looong line at my office building's elevator. Gah, my neurosis is showing again!

Photos are from here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. 

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing... series. 

oops, my neurosis is showing...

As you might know from here, I've been enjoying my new grown-up's coloring book. But I have to admit that when I started out, it kind of tested my decision-making skills.

After coloring in one part, so many thoughts flooded my head: Which color do I use next? Which warm color do I put beside this cool color? Should I pair it with its complementary color or not? 

With all these decisions, coloring a page took a while. Until I started a ROYGBV color scheme...

Coloring rainbow-style made it easier to choose which color to use next! So I've been obsessed with it.

Gee, I wonder when I'm ever going to finish this non-ROYGBV page now...

Oops, my neurosis is showing again.

Photos are my own and from here.

Click here for the of-dots-&-things version of this post. Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing... series.

oops, my neurosis is showing...

If you've been following my main blog, you might already know how enamored I am with the idea of wearing one's children's names or initials around one's neck. Katie Holmes started it by wearing her necklace with a Jennifer Myers' diamond-encrusted disc pendant of the letter S for Suri. 

As I posted here last year, I'd already gotten a set of discs with Isabella and Noah's names hand-stamped on it (from Tea Party Jewelry).

Shortly after, I also got a set of typewriter key initial pendants (from Gwen Delicious).

But during our recent trip, I ordered 2 more sets from Etsy: a set of these rectangle pendants - hand-stamped with my children's names again (from I'm Blessed)...

and a set of these tiny, delicate square initial pendants of an I and an N (from Silver Mustangs)...

When Isabella saw my new necklaces, she exclaimed, "What? You bought name necklaces again?! How many of those do you need?" It was then that I realized that she was right! I am obsessed!

But how couldn't I be? Aren't these tiny (they're only 7mm in size!) square pendants so pretty (remember these square bangles and rings)? I also like that the charms are brass and the necklace is silver (naks, mixing it up).

Then again, why do I need 4 different necklace sets of my children's names or initials? Eeep, my neurosis is indeed showing again!

Photos from americanhoney, teapartyjewelry, gwendelicious, imblessed and silvermustangs.

P.S. I cropped the photo of Katie Holmes and Suri so you could see Katie's necklace better. But also to crop out those ankle boots that humiliates "Suri" in her burnbook. Have to say I crack up every time she disses Bennifer's girls' "style".

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis is Showing... series.

oops, my neurosis is showing...

Not knowing if it should be Happy Heart's Day or Happy Hearts Day or Happy Hearts' Day would normally bother me. I am sure it's Valentine's Day because Valentine is a person and it's his day, so it's an apostrophe-S. I struggle too on Mother's Day. Most write it with an apostrophe-S, like it's the day of just one mother. But isn't it a day for all mothers? So shouldn't it be Mothers' Day: S-apostrophe?

But this Valentine's Day, I let it go. Last year, my post read Happy Heart's Day. This year, it reads Happy Hearts Day. I don't know which one is correct or if it should even be written with an S-apostrophe, but I've learned to stop obsessing about it. It doesn't matter what the right way of writing it is. Maybe I'm not as neurotic as I thought I was. :)

Yes, it's okay. It's okay to NOT know where the apostrophe should be, or even if it's needed at all. Hmmm... But no, "its okay" is NOT okay. The absence of an apostrophe on an "it is" contraction is NOT okay. Oh, and notice how I have trouble typing just OK and make it a point to type the whole word? Gah! Just when I thought I was no longer neurotic... Oops, maybe my neurosis is showing after all...

Photo from acupofjo.

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing... series.

oops, my neurosis is showing...

Discovering here that there are things I would have missed had I been at work, I got to thinking about how much I must have missed when Isabella was growing up. It gave me an awful, awful feeling.

Since I didn't have the luxury of taking a break from work then, I started to wonder if work got in the way of mothering when Isabella was a young child. I began to get neurotic, wondering if Isabella's low regard for tidy hair is my fault after all. She didn't seem to adopt the habit of brushing her hair before leaving the house so it is always quite unkempt.

And I wonder if this is because I never spent time fixing her hair when she was a young child. At most, I gathered her hair in pigtails or a ponytail. But I never gave her a fancy braid like this.

Brushing Isabella's hair took only a second or two. And maybe that's why she takes just about that much time with her hair today.

Is this one of those things I missed - one of those things I didn't get to teach her - because I was at work? Had I devoted a bit more time to fixing her hair, would she be sporting a pretty braid like this today?

Awful, awful feeling. Am I right to be guilty? Or is my neurosis showing yet again?

Photos from acupofjo. If it's not too late for you, check out Jo's blog for her pretty hair tutorials.

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing... series. Click here for the ofdotsnthings version of this post.

oops, my neurosis is showing...

Signs that my candy obsession might be a tad neurotic:

1 I always have a plastic pouch of strawberry tape in my bag. And they're for me, not the kids. In fact, I have to admit I secretly wish the kids don't ask for some. Haha, selfish!

2 I truly believe my tummy has a separate compartment for candy. No matter how stuffed I am -- as the hubby would say, "kapag kasing-tigas na ng ulo ko yung tiyan ko" (cannot be translated for my non-Filipino readers so just read as "No matter how extremely full I am..."), I still have space for candy.

3 A trip to NYC is not complete without a visit to the M&Ms and Hersheys stores. I've had photo ops with the M&Ms mascots, I drool over the huge tubes of uniquely colored M&Ms (in unique pastels, easter colors and even different shades of neutrals)...

... and I struggle with the decision to NOT buy a pair of M&Ms earrings...

... or Hershey's memorabilia (and I go through this tug of war in my head every single time!).

4 I have a Bubbleyum messenger bag that I use as my office laptop bag. I shamelessly bring it to the boardroom amid my colleagues' Prada and Furla laptop bags (Don't worry, my direct-reports still respected me, or at least they acted like they did. Hehe.).

I first spotted it in FAO Schwarz but the tug of war in my head went towards not-buy. Months after though, I regreted my decision and purchased it online.

Oops, is my neurosis showing yet again?

Photos from annnniegirl, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing... series.

oops, my neurosis is showing...

I just recently realized I chat with punctuation marks. On Facebook or Whatsapp convos or the office Communicator, I noticed I have periods or exclamation points at the end of my sentences.

I'm not a stickler for capitalization. I sometimes start sentences with a small letter. But I always have to have a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. Even abbreviations, like OMG, need to be followed by an exclamation point. OMG!

Sigh, my neurosis is showing again...

Photo from garancedore.

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing... series. 

oops, my neurosis is showing...

I had written the post Simple Trick: Organizing Your Closet here a whole 2 months before it was finally published. You see, I cannot bring myself to publish 2 posts from the same series (in this case, the Simple Trick series) in one page. And since my Blogger is set to 7 posts to a page, I could only publish it until it was the 7th post from my last Simple Trick post here.

I know! My neurosis is showing again... Sigh.

Photo from etsy.

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing series.   

oops, my neurosis is showing...

I've heard of a few people who don't start reading a book unless they know they will like the end of the novel. They peek at the last few pages to see how the story ends.

I am the exact opposite. I cannot know how a book ends and still keep on reading it. In fact, when I had just started reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I saw a shirt that read "Dumbledore dies on page 596 (I just saved you 4 hours and $30)" and that spoiler ruined it for me. I stopped reading Book 6 and couldn't even bring myself to read Book 7.

Sigh. Is my neurosis showing again?

Photo from annnniegirl.

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing series.

oops, my neurosis is showing...

This photo filled with lavender could have been part of my of-dots-&-things Color Obsession post on lavender here. But for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to include it. The greens, browns, yellows & nudes were exactly the colors I chose in my lavender color palette. But for some reason, this photo still didn't make the cut.

Am not really sure why. Could it be the huge leopard print? Perhaps they're a tad too big? Maybe I find the model's pose too awkward? Too contrived? Too unreal?

I don't really know. What makes it even more puzzling is that I feel it is pretty enough a picture to post in this blog. Which leads me to my neurosis. I'm not a very good photographer so most of the photos I take myself never make the cut. That's why I have a post on my home makeover here without an actual photo of my house. It wasn't easy to find photos on the web with furniture pieces that resemble mine. But I preferred that over posting photos of the real thing - because they had bad lighting. This is also why I used a screenshot from H&M here to show my shopping loot rather than upload a photo of the actual loot. I even spent some time surfing for a photo of the sleeveless seafoam green top I also purchased but didn't find it. So I opted to just mention that I got one and plan to pair it with my peach shorts. Instead of uploading a photo of the actual outfit.

You see, my blog is my repository of beautiful things. So if I decide to post an ugly photo, I'd probably end up taking it down later anyway. I realize my posts could end up as contrived & unreal as the model above. But while the pretty photos are taken by much better photographers than I am, I promise that every word is genuine and real and all so, so me.

Sigh. My neurosis is showing yet again...

Photo from here.  

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing series.

oops, my neurosis is showing...

I have a problem with floating stickers on the windshield.

When I'm inside the car, I can't seem to look past them. So they give me a headache.

Because I need the stickers to be out of my line of sight, the only acceptable windshield space is the bottommost portion which is hard to get to because there's hardly enough space for hands to fit - what more hands that are trying to stick the sticker as close as possible to the bottom edge of the windshield? Not to mention the fact that the stickers cannot be stuck in a lopsided manner. I need them to be evenly aligned to the edge of the windshield. I used to stick them on an acetate film. But acetate films are hard to come by these days (do overhead projectors still exist?). So I actually haven't stuck an LTO-registration sticker on my windshield for 5 years now. And you know how much of a dutiful driver I am from here. So while I feel guilty about it, I really prefer a clear, floating-sticker-free windshield like this.

Oops, is my neurosis showing again?

Photos from annnniegirl.

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing series.

oops, my neurosis is showing...

You already know I'm a Friends fanatic from here and here. So I hope I've eased you in gradually enough that you are ready for how neurotic this obsession really is...

I've actually visited Monica and Chandler's building on Grove and Bedford in New York. Where Central Perk should be is a quaint little place called The Little Owl (at least it was when I was there almost 5 years ago).

At the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in California, I got to see the house Monica and Ross grew up in - the one where most of the flashbacks of bubbly fat Monica and Chandler's flock-of-seagulls-hair were shot. We also passed by Stage 24, the only stage in the WB lot with a name: The FRIENDS Stage.

And of course, my favorite FRIENDS moment of all: standing right in the middle of the Central Perk set!

It was so surreal. We were so giddy about being there that we didn't even catch the part when our tour guide said we were not allowed to touch the set. By the time we realized it was prohibited, we had already leaned on the iconic orange couch!

I have watched each episode at least a thousand times that I know things like their apartment numbers started out as 5 & 6, but soon changed to 19 & 20. I have never encountered a Friends trivia question I could not answer that I, my hubby and the other Friends fanatic we know have come up with our own trivia games like: Name the 10 Thanksgiving episodes in the right order, or Name the 10 season-enders, or Name the most celebrities who've guested on the show. And we've been playing that last game for so long, actors from shows of today were not even considered celebrities yet: Actors like Michael Vartan of Alias who played Tom Selleck/Richard Burke's son who Monica also dated, Glee's Principal Figgins who was Joey's doctor when he had kidney stones, CSI Miami's Emily Procter who, I swear, looks and sounds like the girl Joey dated when he was the Hombre perfume guy, and of course, House's Hugh Laurie who sat beside Rachel on the plane to Ross' wedding in London.

Oh, and between me and my hubby, we have collected a considerable share of Friends shirts: You already know of my Regina Phalange shirt from here. We, of course, also have shirts with the FRIENDS logo, the Central Perk logo and the iconic couch. My hubby has one with Joey's signature pick-up line, "How you doin'?", one with a cartoon of a smelly cat & "what are they feeding you?" printed on the back, and one with Ross' sketch of how they were supposed to maneuver his new couch up the stairs of his building - with scribbles of "Pivot! Pivot! PI-VOT!!!". I almost popped $30 at the NBC store for a regular white tee with...

ROSS GELLER

BACHELOR BASH

1998

... in plain black i-think-Times-New-Roman printing on the front, had it not been for my enterprising friend K who insisted she could easily have those words printed on a white shirt. Maybe we could even add Joey's headshot at the back - which is actually more like the actual giveaway at Ross' bachelor party. Explore my photo archive for photos of these shirts. And as luck would have it, I chanced upon Ross' FRANKIE SAYS RELAX shirt in the most unexpected place -- a People Are People store! It's much bigger than Ross' tiny t-shirt, but it seems as thin and comfy. And like Rachel, I love to sleep in it!

And so even though they've taken their final bow...

I love that there are still bits and pieces of FRIENDS in existence today. Oops, my neurosis showing again... Hope I haven't scared you away. If it helps, I promise to make this my last Friends post for a while. :)

Photos are from here, YouTube (screenshots) and my own. Source of the Final Bow photo is credited in my original post here. Photos of the shirts in my picasa archive are from here, here, here, here, here and here.

Click here for previous posts from the Oops, My Neurosis Is Showing... series.