It is almost essential to embrace your neuroses head on when you have this many, for some reason it makes you less crazy...

Today has been an exciting day in the world of my extreme and crippling phobia of flirting with a member of the opposite sex!

For those of you who don't know, when it comes to me and men there are two things that are utterly important in the way I think.

1. If the guy is ginger, 9.89 times out of 10 I am going to think he is the most sexiest man alive. I say 9.89 because I do draw the line at the only 3 ginger men who do not pass my standards - Mick Hucknall from Simply Red, Chris Evans from British presenting stuff, and Work-Buddy-James.

and

2. I am not able to make conversation with any man at all if I think that there is any chance A: I have a chance with them, B: I think they're flirting at all or C: I've realised that I might have a crippling crush on them.

This second one has ruled my life for a good 15 years now and pretty much sucks... well it used to suck when I was younger and I would go through the teenage angst of "I just want to get married with a man who loves me for me and not for the size of my chest" whilst I cried into ice cream and watch Dawson's Creek, moaning that I would never find a man who would love me and protect me like Pacey did for Joey on that show... you know, the usual stuff.

From about 23 years onwards though, I kinda got used to the fact that I mentally rejected men and I found myself becoming far too independent for any poor sod who wanted to date me. Mostly though, I just got bored and lost the energy to even care about it. Every so often nowadays, I might think to myself... "huh, I haven't fancied anyone in about three years... I should probably do something about that." But then it will only follow with "Nah, it sounds like far too much effort, besides I'm only going to throw up on his shoes on the first date and run in the opposite direction as fast as I can and what's the point in that?"


All of this has lead me to be very lazy, but then this morning two beautiful guys turned up at my work place. One with strawberry blonde hair who made me think that I had died and gone to heaven, and the other with the reddest hair I have ever seen with beard to match. Yeah, that was a nice experience for me.

But the strange thing about it was that as they continued to walk past me throughout the day, I managed on the third time to look them in the eye and smile!! Huzzah! There is life in the old flirt box yet! (Before you ask, I don't really know what a flirt box is but I'm 88% sure it's not meant to be dirty).

Then later, I was walking down some stairs, went through a door and the really ginger one was there. You know what I did? I talked to him!! Yup!! I engaged him in conversation and I didn't come off weird or anything, plus I didn't even throw up in his lap!! Talk about progress.

It was awesome, I was like "Excuse me, is it okay for me to walk on this floor?" and he was all "Yeah, sure, it's fine." Then I smiled at him and was like "Great, thanks." And then I walked past him and went back to my office.

...

I know right? I was so impressed with myself.

Also, it's worth mentioning at this point that he was in fact fixing the floor and he had ripped off the entire surface so I wasn't sure if I should walk on it. I wasn't just passing by and suddenly thought "holy crap, is this the way I should really be transporting myself inside a hospital? I'd better ask the pretty ginger man because he would know, gingers know everything."

I haven't seen them since but I've also hid away in my office for the rest of the day out of fear that I might have overdone myself on the flirting side and I didn't want to overdo all the progress I had made today.

Maybe they'll be back tomorrow and I can go up to him and say "Hey, remember that time yesterday when I asked you about the floor?" and he'd say "Yeah" and then we'd both laugh fondly and say "good times." And that's how we would part because anything further would have me shaking and throwing up.

Yes this is the most extreme of my neuroses. And yes, although I joke about it (because what else can I do?) I probably do actually need therapy for this one. Until then though, I will laugh and shake my head at myself like everyone else does, while simply asking... "Oh Lisa, what are you like?"

Peace out my lovelies.