I don’t know a lot about Astrology but I do know that some of my personality traits must have a thing or two to do with my sign.  Virgos by definition, are often known to be analyzers who think things through.  Being an analyzer is one thing, but I might be one of those people who on occasion tend to overdue it.

An Unpolished Confession: On occasion is code for ALL THE TIME!

Unfortunately, being a mega analyzer can sometimes lead to no good.

I know first hand that there’s nothing worse than over thinking a situation to the point of disillusionment so I work really hard to embrace my astrologically induced quirks and use them to my advantage.

The positive side of over thinking:  

I’m a stickler for accuracy.  I pay close attention to detail.  I take my time with tasks and jump at the chance to put my skills to the test when faced with a mental challenge.

USE IT OR LOSE IT

 I was once told that I should compare my brain to a muscle.  If I stay mentally stimulated my brain function improves thereby helping the brain grow stronger.  I was told to never stop learning because like exercise, when you stop your muscles lose strength, or in other words atrophy.

Or In Unpolished Words:

BRAIN FOOD

When I was a kid my Dad would quiz me at the dinner table.  The topics included everything from math problems to current events to spelling words.  More times than not our version of “family game night” didn’t always go so smoothly.  Typically, it would start to go downhill after I asked for a piece of paper and a pencil to help figure out the problem.  My Dad would blow his stack because he could not comprehend why I could not comprehend his simple questions.

MY DAD:  “Tiny, for the TENTH TIME…. If I have TEN apples and I take SIX apples away, what percentage of apples DO I HAVE LEFT?”

ME:        “Um, can I have a piece of paper?”

MY DAD (at this point screaming and exasperated):

 “THERE ARE TEN APPLES.  I TAKE SIX AWAY.  SO THERE ARE FOUR LEFT…. FOUR LEFT.   FOUR!!!!!!!  WHAT PERCENT IS THAT?  WHY DO YOU NEED A PIECE OF PAPER???????????”

ME:    “DAD, I DON’T KNOWWWWWWWWWW.   STOP YELLING AT ME.  I HAVE A MENTAL BLOCK.  I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND PERCENTAGES!”

Inevitably, the pop quiz would always end with me in tears and my Dad frustrated out of his mind. To this day, we still laugh about it and every once in a while he’ll randomly hit me up with a question!  For the record, I’m a wiz at percentages now!

MORE BRAIN FOOD, PLEASE!

When my Dad realized one more math problem would push us both over the edge, we’d shift subjects.  Once, I remember he told me something my Grandma used to say when he was a kid:

My Dad:       “If it’s not raining….. It must be raining.”

I was totally clueless.

Me:    “Huh?  But you just said it’s NOT raining.”

I sat for what seemed like hours repeating that one sentence over and over again until it finally clicked.

Me:   “OHhhhhh.  Now I get it!  If it’s NOT raining…… It must BE raining!  I get it.  I get it!”

Take a minute.  Think about it.  You’ll get it too.

My Mom used to chime in on the fun also.   She’d get my wheels spinning with this one:

“Moses Supposes His Toeses Are Roses

But Moses Supposes Erroneously.

For Moses He Knowses His Toeses Aren’t Roses

As Moses Supposes His Toeses To Be.”

First of all, WHAT???  I was dizzy and tongue-twisted trying to repeat it back, but that ended up being the least of it.  I was just a little girl.  I couldn’t even pronounce the word erroneously and I certainly had no idea what it meant.  My parents encouraged me to look up words I didn’t know in the dictionary instead of asking someone for help.  Their theory was that if I learned the definition on my own, I’d never forget it.  I always wonder if it’s a coincidence that erroneous happens to be one of my favorite words today!

I still refer to the dictionary and the thesaurus with my name embossed on the front covers that I got as a Bat Mitzvah present twenty-nine years ago.  They are both falling apart at the seams but I love them and will never trash them.  Who needs Wikipedia when you have The Random House College Dictionary and the Fourth Edition of Roget’s International Thesaurus?

SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR YOU TOO

For me, a day doesn’t go by without coming across some type of brain teaser online.  I always take a minute to figure out the answers so that my mind gets some of the exercise it needs.  I gotta hang on to whatever brain cells I have left, you know?  Typically, what puzzles me more than the actual puzzles themselves, are the people who can’t figure out the puzzles!  For instance, take a look at the one below.  How is it possible that anyone wouldn’t be able to crack this Da Vinci code?

                    It’s just a hunch, but I doubt this is a GENIUS ONLY level of difficulty.  Maybe we should ask JUNU her opinion.  She’s probably in the Mensa society!

Or how about this one:

Seriously, I need to know who the people are that can’t read this.

Here’s one more:

The stupid part about this brain teaser is that they don’t tell you which word is the one that 70% of people see first, so how can we see if it’s true or not?  What I really want to know are the words that the other 30% of people saw first.  Out of curiosity, what’s the first word you saw?

Okay, last one.  I promise:

In all honesty, my brain really had to focus here because I kept forgetting which squares I had already counted so I kept having to go back and re-count.  I am confident that my unpolished friends are not in the 90% of people who fail this test.  I have faith that if you take your time and you know how to count, you’ll get it right!

To wrap up this blog entry, I want to share with you a picture I saw the other day.  I thought it was awesome because it confused me just enough to make me think it through a dozen times until it made perfectly logical sense.  When I stopped over thinking the photo’s caption, I realized just how much I had been over thinking!

Can you make out the caption?  It says: A pic of Macaulay Culkin wearing a t-shirt w/ a pic of Ryan Gosling wearing a shirt that has a pic of Macaulay Culkin.

JUST TO LET YOU KNOW… As much as being an over thinker can occasionally complicate even the simplest of things, I’d much rather think too much than too little.  People who waste their brains away by hardly thinking at all drive me nuts.  Sometimes I even find myself over thinking how those individuals get by in this world.  The bottom line is that I’ll never be over thinking cuz I’m always over thinking!  Go think about that.