My name is Tracy and I have irritating habits.

It has come to my attention that there is the slight chance, a vague possibility that I might have, on rare occasions… one or two irritating habits.
Possibly one of them is to frequently succumb to the urge to include… those three little dots when I write.

Yes ok, I admit I am not perfect. Pretty close, but nobody is completely utterly perfect hey?

So, apparently I have the irritating habit of moving my feet “all the time” according to my daughter.
“You can’t tap your toes in mid air!” she blurted out the other day when I sat with my feet up on the coffee table and my feet, crossed at the ankles began their own little dance.
She startled me.
I’m not even conscious of it. My feet, my toes just move all of their own accord, and there doesn’t even have to be music playing.
I tried to explain this to my daughter.
“I have an internal beat playing all the time in my head. I can’t help it.”

But, apparently this irritates her, as does my moving of feet whilst in bed. Sometimes she comes into my room to watch movies I’ve taped and we lie in bed together and APPARENTLY I never stop moving my feet.
I’m even less aware of that “in bed moving the feet thing” than I am the toe tapping.
My husband hasn’t complained though but that’s probably because when he’s awake in bed he tends to fidget and faff a lot.
Sometimes all his faffing and fidgeting annoys ME…but hey, (there’s those three dots again) I’m really going to try and stick to talking about MY irritating habits.
A sort of, confessional if you like.

Another thing my daughter told me just today, or was it yesterday (I have trouble remembering things – yet ANOTHER irritating habit I’m told) was that I roll my eyes a LOT.
“You probably roll them about fifty times a day!” she said.
“There! You just rolled them AGAIN!”
(I was trying really hard to make my eyes not do ANYTHING….it was weird.)
I’m really totally unaware of rolling my eyes. It’s probably because I’ve had four children. Children MAKE you roll your eyes, in disbelief, despair, frustration! Subconsciously you want heads to roll, but that’s child abuse, so you roll your eyes instead. That’s my theory.

I shall try to make a concerted effort to keep my eyes from rolling around too much, from now on.

My toothpaste squeezing skills suck. I will readily admit to this, because today I actually felt irritated at myself when I saw the state of my toothpaste tube there on the ensuite sink.
I found myself thinking “I am 45 years of age and my toothpaste tube looks like a two year old has been using it.”
I just don’t know how you control toothpaste “glug”. You know what I mean. That hardened plug which is impossible to close the cap lid on, that gets bigger and bigger and harder and harder until you squeeze really hard and it shoots out, like an explosive zit all over the mirror.

Oh you can try washing that plug away by rinsing it under the tap but then the water gets into the tube and you end up squirting out bubbly watery toothpaste…all over the sink. Bubbly watery toothpaste is just not satisfying to brush your teeth with.

And I squeeze the tube wherever. Never from the bottom, as my husband says it should be done.
I know this is infernally irritating to him. Which is why we usually have our own toothpaste tubes.

I always skip the beginning of movies. Just the non essential bits, you know. Which studio it was filmed at, all the opening credits where it’s just music playing and scenes like a car driving down a windy mountainous road.
You don’t need to see those bits. I want to just get started!
This really irritates my husband for some reason and I don’t understand why, especially when three seconds in he’s saying “It’s a bit slow….”

And I have the annoying habit of choosing something to watch, ignoring my husband’s grumbles, only to leave the room halfway through because I’ve become bored, or thought of something else I could be doing.
My mind is very scattered.
I can see how that would be irritating.

What else?
Lately I have been irritating myself (yes it is possible to irritate ones self) by saying certain phrases a lot.
Like – “You know?” or “You know what I mean?”
I say that ALL the time.
I must STOP.
The sound of my own voice irritates me too. Actually this is just a recent thing. I don’t know if it irritates other people, but sometimes I think I sound a bit whiny.
I don’t like it, but nobody has actually said anything to me, so perhaps it’s just an internal perceptual thing, know what I mean?

I leave the walk in wardrobe door open sometimes. Often just a crack and that irritates the heck out of my husband.
It makes me laugh that something so inconsequential should bug him so much.
It’s kind of payback for the way he leaves all his damn shoes under the end of the bed instead of putting them IN the walk in wardrobe!
Makes sense to just WALK those damn shoes right in the WALK in wardrobe!
And his tissues, folded neatly in squares on his bedside table….and drink BOTTLES on the bedside table…and clothes on the FLOOR!
But no….a slightly opened door sends him into a frenzy of irritation.
Go figure.

I am irritating in the way that I over think, over analyse things.
I know I am. It’s a terrible habit and it annoys ME too. My life, my emotions are in a permanent state of autopsy.

It is irritating to those around me that I despise LIGHT. I am aware of this.
My eyes just really cannot tolerate strong light, even indoors!

Today when I mentioned to my husband that I was looking forward to doing some filming on our upcoming trip to the US and hoped the landscape would be nice and “bleak” he said to me.
“You just need to live in a horror movie set.”
It’s true. I’d do well living in all the gloom and shadows.

Up until recently I couldn’t stand sitting at the dining table with my family because the two overhead recessed lights are SO bright that I felt like I needed sunglasses on to be able to eat dinner comfortably!
My husband on the other hand needs football stadium lighting when it comes to eating meals.(Why I don’t know because he inhales it so fast that there isn’t much to see.)
In the end I insisted that he remove the light bulb above my end of the table, so now he sits in the spotlight to eat dinner while I can enjoy a much subdued lighting mood while I dine.
If it were up to me I’d eat candle lit dinners every night.

I shriek loudly, and frequently in the car when I think my husband is about to run over a bird, or meandering duck, or lizard or whatever happens to be on the road or flying towards us.
I can’t help it. I just don’t want to hit anything, and hurt it, but it makes my husband jump and he yells at me for giving him a fright, which in his opinion could then cause us to have an accident.
(But if he just looked more carefully for meandering ducks and lizards and all creatures great and small then I wouldn’t panic.)

Well, I think that about does it?
Not really that many things to complain about are there?
I’m pretty good as a whole, compared to some, of whom I’ve tried not to mention too much about here in this post.

So, what irritating habits can YOU admit to? Go on, I’ve been brave enough to share.