It all started with a chair.

As humans, we are bound by routines.  All of us.  Some more than others, but we all have things that we like to do a particular way, out of some conscious or unconscious need to establish order in our lives.  Some might argue that when this desire to do things a particular way reaches a certain intensity, the order we seek becomes imposed on us, instead of sovereignly established by us.  But not me.  That's way too deep, especially for someone with as many routines as I have. 


I will go back and make sure the refrigerator door is shut every single morning before leaving the house.  I check it, I turn the alarm on, and I run back upstairs to check it again before I leave.  Then, I will turn around and make sure I closed the garage door and I am rounding the corner to leave our subdivision, even though I closed the garage door about five seconds prior.  When I smoked, I HAD to smoke before bed.  That was certainly a routine, if not an outright ritual.  Even now, as a nonsmoker, I have a nightly routine before bed.  I turn the television off, get up from the couch, turn the living room light off and walk into the kitchen.  Once there, I run a glass of water and take my pills before heading upstairs.  Then I move Wooly Cat off of my side of the bed, crawl under the covers, and turn Juno off.  Once in bed, I have to face the outside of--


What's that?  Yeah, Juno.  Yes, every night.  No, I'm not kidding. 


It's how she goes to sleep.  She goes to work at 5:00 a.m., so she goes to bed way before I do.  She gets up from the couch, kisses me goodnight, and goes upstairs to watch Juno and crash.  I don't know how far she makes it each night, but I do know that it's almost admirable in some freakish way that she does not deviate.  Seriously, y'all.  She watches this movie every freaking night. 


It has become a weird kind of clock for me.  I know how long she has been in bed by which scene is playing.  If it's the opening credits, that means I'm probably going to be tired the next day, because the movie has had time to play all the way through once and then start over.  It's strange, but I seem to catch a lot of the same scenes over and over.  The initial meeting with Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner.  The scene with Juno crying on the side of the road.  The scene with the horror movies.  I've seen those three a lot, but only this week, after at least a couple months of turning this movie off every single night, did I walk into the bedroom as Tom Hanks was discussing his newest miniseries in the blurb that comes on after the credits finish rolling. 


So, yeah, Stephanie watches Juno every night.  Weird.  Almost a little creepy.  But I can't give her too much hell.  I like to listen to the soundtrack of Wicked and Rent while we're driving to Fayetteville on the Friday night before Razorback football games.  And I'm straight.  Go figure.