Spring Cleaning on the First Day of Autumn

I can never do things like most normal people. Not only am I six months late to do this horrid task, everything that I remove from one place and put in another place also is placed very carefully. What I mean is that I always aim for the perfect composition of placement, even though it’s only temporary. Just like when I hang the washing out on the line. Every item must have complimentary color coordinated clothespins and be near the same color garments that don’t clash demonstrably. I know. I am insane.
This particularness started when I was a kid. I noticed it myself when I played with a tennis ball against the wall. If I made any errors of not following through on the process of throwing the ball a certain way, I had to go back to the beginning and start all over. Now I don’t start over.  Instead, I redo some obvious mistakes to rectify the worst ones. I do this with everything instinctively by now without thinking about it. From matching my undies and socks to my outfits, to making a salad. Even the way I cut an avocado has to be just right so I can fan it out artistically or put it around the perimeter of the salad or slice it the long way for sandwiches. It has to be perfect to me.
I know that this is all connected to my obsessive compulsions. I know it’s an odd way to live. But I’ve stopped worrying about it and don’t give a hoot any more if somebody catches me counting the lavender heads I’m cutting off. This is me. I am kooky and crazy and artsy and childlike and wise and silly and strident with everything I do. And I’ve gone back to not caring what others think of me, since I’m usually doing these weird things in the boonies where I live a private, quiet kind of life, away from the stresses of society with its judgments. So, if it makes me happy to count the flowerheads as I prune them with a sea of them in front of me, so be it. John is also insane, but in other ways. We’re both beyond the valley of quirky by now, living this feral life for so long. Even though we clean up pretty well when the occasion demands, our lives are unfettered with other people’s rules. So, if we seem beyond eccentric to many, well…so what?
I wrote this a few weeks ago. Since then, I had a nasty fall in the garden I love so dearly. Again, I wasn’t watching where I was going and I slipped on something while wearing my gumboots, reminiscent of the time I broke my leg badly a few years ago after tripping on similar gumboots that were lying on the ground. But luckily, I only landed on my face onto a softish patch of dirt and didn’t pierce my carotid artery or jugular vein with that sharp corner of the large rock that my head bounced back onto, also catching my head just under my chin. The worst damage, aside from my bruised ego was my right leg, the one with the titanium rod in it, that now has a goose egg sized hematoma in the calf muscle also. But at least the excessive swelling has diminished and so has the black bruising. Perhaps this knocked some sense into me, to be more careful. Not sure. I still seem to be walking into many things as I wander around the place. I’m so torn between doing everything humanly possible in one or two days (unending list in my head) or just chucking that part of my life and sitting outside pondering the universe.