What's your middle name? And how do you spell that?

When Erin & I were little and still living in Pensacola, Papa and The Meemz would come visit fairly often.  The drive from Lake City to Pensacola was nothing compared to the ridiculous trek from Lake City to TN.   Anywho- this was in the early 90s before bi-polar was really understood at all and The Meemz doctors had not yet found a good mix of her meds to keep her on any kind of even keel.  As a result, the cycles The Meemz went through were fairly extreme, even more so than the ones she goes through now I think.

One of the things the Meemz would fixate on when she was up was lists.  She dearly loved making lists of anything and everything.  Middle names, family members, things she "needed" to buy, types of celery, etc.  Ok, not really the types of celery but you get the idea.  Erin and I were both in middle school at this point, I was in the 6th grade and Erin was in 8th and of course we talked non-stop about all of the fascinating things that were going on in middle school and of course mentioned our friends by name frequently.  Any time that TM was around for one of these scintillating tales, she would stop us each time we mentioned someone and ask us what their middle name was and how they spelled it.  Then she would add it to her list.  I'm not entirely sure what she did with the lists of middle names but I know that she made several of them over the years.  She made lists of our friends middle names, middle names of family members and maybe even middle names of celebrities.  (TM likes to keep up on celebrity "news" you know)

Meemz would also get on organizing jags.  I use the word 'organizing' very loosely here because more often than not, no one could find anything after TM had finished with her organization.  On one particular occasion, TM decided that she needed to reorganize our kitchen.  All of it.  At 3:00 a.m.  Mr. Moe & The Suze were asleep, as most people would be at 3:00 a.m., when they were awakened by a lot of racket coming from the kitchen.  Their room was closest to the kitchen so there was no way they were going to sleep through this.  Mr. Moe got up and went to check things out.  When he came back, his conversation with The Suze went something like this:

TS:  What in the world is making all that racket?
MM:  Your mother.
TS:  What? 
MM:  Your mother.
TS:  Why?  What is she doing in there?
MM:  Cleaning out our cabinets.  All of them.
TS:  Are you serious?
MM:  Can I make this stuff up?

The Meemz has gotten off her organizing kick in recent years but she will still make the odd list here and there.  If you go to her apartment and really look around, you can find all kinds of lists which are highly entertaining.  You can tell that she's talking out loud while she writes them because a lot of them read like a conversation.  There is usually some type of commentary included as well.  Makes for a fascinating read.  Trust me.