I am my mother's daughter

So how uptight am I?

I really don't think it's too much to ask that someone flush the toilet when they pee. Or that they keep their dirty socks off the pillows that I'll be sleeping on in a couple of hours. To me, that sounds like common courtesy.

But this is a recurring theme in my life - mostly with my guy friends, but increasingly more with girls, too - people telling me to just chill the hell out.

I think I've grown a lot in the past couple years. I think I'm much more at ease with myself and my surroundings than I ever used to be. But apparently, by my new friends' standards, I'm just an uptight bitch.

Really, though...If I'm not as relaxed as they are, is that a bad thing? The more they call me out on it, the more I have the urge to fight back, hold on to my standards, defend my rigidity. (Is that a word...?) One of my friends here told me, when I was darting around the apartment to make my bed, put dirty dishes in the sink, throw clothes in the dresser, that if I didn't fix it now, that behavior was going to become very "harsh" in me when I got older. Wtf is that? I think it's better than never learning good cleaning habits and being a slob for your entire life. And I'm not harsh about it - I'm not demanding that anyone use a coaster, or even that they wash their own dishes. I just like my space to be reasonably neat.

I mean, granted, I have rather absurd standards for sanitation, given who my mother is. (You all know Jackie.) But clean is not a bad thing!! Why don't people understand that?!

Mostly, I think, my problem is that it happens to be a very cute boy who's calling me out on all of this. He's decided to "push back," he said, by not flushing the toilet when he comes over.

Cute as he is, I may have to kill him.

Love always,

molly