Obsessive/Compulsive or Organized/Committed?

Sitting in a restaurant waiting for our food to arrive I watch a couple at another table get their meals placed in front of them.  A perfectly normal looking pair of diners, husband and wife perhaps, mid-forties, dressed up for their pleasant evening out. The wife picks up her cutlery and begins to  eat while her husband pulls a tiny tape measure out of his pocket and proceeds to measure his food. Nose just inches from his plate he carefully measures each item.... meat, potatoes, veg.  He doesn't write anything down, just measures. The little tape zips back and forth, out and in over his plate and cutlery, everything accounted for.  His wife, obviously used to the process,  continues to calmly eat her meal. When done with the tape measure the gentleman slips it back into his pocket and picks up his knife and fork and eats his dinner, impulses fulfilled. As compulsions go this was one I hadn't seen before and it seemed perfectly harmless. His food might have gotten a little cold but no one else was bothered or inconvenienced.
Tics, habitual behaviour, compulsions, OCD, anal behaviour, there's lot of names for it. Nutty, crazy, irritating are a few more. Depends on which side of the habit you're on. We all have them, it's just that some are more obvious like the tape measure. Start asking around and you'll be surprised at the routines and habits people can't do without or if they do it leaves them irritated and anxious in some way.
I was at a Christmas office party with my husband many years ago and each of the round dining tables in the venue had a potted poinsettia on it. As I sat, bored, listening to speeches from the office bigwigs I noticed that the pot on our table had a bar code tag stuck to the side of it. I reached over and carefully peeled it off, just a small effort to make it look nicer. Something to do in my boredom. Another woman at the table observed me and snidely remarked, " a little OCD are we?"  I was stung. "No, I prefer to think of it as a little Martha Stewart", I responded.  Just depends which side of the moment you are on. I could have easily left the tag there and not been bothered by it. OCD in my book would be getting up and removing the tag from everyone else's poinsettia pot as well. I know a woman who can't go to bed without plumping and shaping her couch cushions. Some can't go to bed without washing all the dirty dishes.  I need a glass of water beside my bed at night. My husband always rinses his mouth out with water before he brushes his teeth. Habits or compulsions? It's a fine line.

I'm not ready for one of these yet.

Talking with friends the other night I said that I had planned both my pregnancies and delivered both babies on their due dates. My friends smiled knowingly at one another and said, "OCD".  I don't know how you can make your babies come out on schedule because of your own compulsion but I just knew I was tired of waiting and told them to get on with it. I prefer to believe I'm just good at observing deadlines. There are no routines I have that are so fixed that something couldn't be changed and not upset me, I don't need to wash my hands all the time, or touch a group of objects in a particular order. My house is generally a bit untidy day to day, ironing not done, bed not made, dirty dishes can, unfortunately, sit on the counters without making me uncomfortable,  I don't get up or go to bed at the same time every day. But...I do find myself counting objects for no reason at times, and when someone is talking to me I will sometimes write words they say on my leg with my fingertip. As a kid I went through a time of not being able to leave the house without taking a quick drink a water, to the point here my mom thought I might be diabetic. Compulsions, habits, comforts?  Are these things a distraction tool of a mind always looking to busy itself? One person's comforting habit is another's obsessive compulsion. I guess when the compulsions and habits become dangerous or consume so much time
that they interfere with life they are signs of clinical OCD.  But otherwise, we are all in glass houses throwing stones if we think what others do is crazy and what we do is just fine. You won't catch 
me taking a measuring tape out for dinner with me anytime soon though.