We’re not quirky, we’re problem-solvers | Lisa Scottoline

Sometimes you have to ask yourself a basic question.

Am I normal?

And if not, do I care?

We begin today’s story with a gift that Daughter Francesca gave me for Christmas, which was a silk turban that you sleep in, allegedly to distribute your natural oils evenly throughout your hair, making it less dry.

According to beauty physics.

Yay!

If only they had a turban for feet.

The silk turban came with a silk pillowcase, which, according to the same beauty principle, is supposed to make your skin less dry, so you look younger.

How?

Let me make the case for my pillowcase.

Half of your life is spent sleeping, with your face against cotton, but cotton doesn’t preserve your natural oils.

Evidently, silk does.

Don’t ask me why.

Because it costs more?

Meanwhile I remember when we learned that normal cotton wasn’t good enough, that it had to be 100-count, then 400-count, and probably now 1,000-count, so next is figuring out how many counts in the silk.

Unless counts don’t count anymore.

Will the silk pillowcase make me look younger?

What are the odds?

Slim to a thousand-count?

But you never know, and in the meantime, it’s fun and pretty and my daughter gave it to me.

What more can you ask from a prezzie?

Miracles?

In any event, I have a silk pillowcase for my desiccated skin and a silk turban for my aging hair, but at night, I slip off the pillow, leaving it to the dogs, who slide around on it like a big skating rink.

Not to mention that, when it gets really cold, I like to sleep wearing a fleece hat, and I still want to sleep in the fleece hat, so I sleep in the turban and put the fleece hat on top, and if you want the definition of glamour, there it is.

I’m basically the guy in Caps For Sale.

Did I mention how single I am?

The only problem with the fleece hat on top of the turban is that the fleece hat slips off, because nothing defeats silk, not even wrinkles.

But I’m going to persevere with my turban/fleece hat combo, for one excellent reason.

It keeps the ticks out of my hair.

You’ll understand this problem if you sleep with dogs. Especially little dogs, who insist on sleeping above or on your pillow. Even if you don’t get ticks, you worry about getting ticks.

I have lost sleep worrying about getting ticks.

Before the turban/fleece combo, I used to worry that a tick was going to crawl into my hair, or worse, into my ear.

Laugh all you want to, but a moth flew in my ear once. It couldn’t get out. Your ear has no exit sign, and bugs can’t read anyway.

Except ticks can.

They are the evil geniuses of the insect world.

I hate ticks, for obvious reasons.

I used to worry about ticks only in summer, because it used to get cold enough in winter to kill them, but no longer.

Thanks to global warming, I found a tick on my dog last week. So because nobody’s fixing climate change, I wear two hats to bed.

That’s another bad thing about climate change, besides a fireball engulfing the entire planet.

By the way, don’t suggest that the dogs sleep elsewhere.

It’s too late, and now they love silk.

And also I use Bravecto on them, but ticks are braver than Bravecto.

But back to my point.

I did have a moment, looking in the mirror at my turban/fleece hat combo, delighted that it provided an excellent tick barrier, when it struck me that maybe this wasn’t normal.

Was it eccentric?

Or maybe just quirky?

Mother Mary always said “be yourself,” but this wasn’t what she had in mind.

Still, I can’t be the only person with quirks.

Please tell me you have a few, or like me, you have 263.

Maybe quirks need better marketing.

Let’s call them workarounds, or life hacks, or something we do to make our life work better for us.

How about brilliant ideas?

Original thinking?

Solutions!

We’re not quirky, we’re problem-solvers.

Works for me.