"Manatee" is a strange name for a crayon colour.

It's no secret that I'm fairly organized. Especially now, having just typed that out. And while I prefer to say "organized", some of my friends prefer to say "anal retentive" or "annoying" or "seriously, you spent your Friday evening doing what?"

Doing what, indeed. I'll be getting to that in a moment.

Because I enjoy organizing, one would also assume that I am a clean-freak or tidy-monster or . . . um, something else related to being clean, except not using the word "clean", because I just used it.   Actually, I'm neither, really. More like a lazy-_____ (when I'm less lazy, I'll think of a better word to put there). I enjoy organizing purely for the aesthetic. I like lining things up on shelves; I enjoy moving furniture around in my room to create a different flow; I like to stack and sort and pile. Basically: I like things to look pretty.

And pretty is spending my Friday evening organizing a new set of 150 Crayola crayons. And now you can all chime in with: "seriously, you spend your Friday evenings doing what?" (See: it's all coming together now.)

I just figured, if the Rapture (or raptor) was really upon us, I'd want to make sure my crayons were nice and organized. Am I right? Right.

I saw this set of crayons at the store last month and was super excited. I've always bought the box o' crayons with 96 colours. Pfft. Who wants 96 when you can have 150?! Answer: only a chump. And since I am not a chump, I bought these crayons. The super rad part of this set is that it doesn't come in a box. Because, just like the number 96, a box is also for chumps. Instead, I got myself a fancy tower, complete with a sharpener (WHOA), three tiers (DOUBLE WHOA) and it telescopes out for the ultimate crayon experience (TRIPLE WHOA).

First things first, I dumped out all the crayons to organize them like a rainbow. I sorted out the specialty crayons first: glittery and metallic, and then started sorted through the major colour groups.

It's not as easy a job as one would think. Some of the colours are tricksy and can't decide whether they want to be a pink or a purple. And the neon colours--where should those live?! Do they have their own bad ass neon club, or do they try to blend in with their regular colour relatives?! And what about that "apricot"? It's not really an orange, but it's hardly a brown either. Where should it live?! And what is up with this "almond"? Seriously now. And who came up with the name "manatee" for a shade of grey? It hardly measures up to it's cousin, "timberwolf". If you had to chose between colouring with "timberwolf" or "manatee", I'm pretty sure you'd go with "timberwolf".

Everyone knows manatees are evil, anyhow.

Yes. Ahem. Anyway.

After sorting and experimenting with the tiers for about an hour . . . Okay, okay: it was more like two hours. What? I wanted to make sure it was perfect. And the tiers weren't exactly easy to work with. Jeez. Where was I? Oh, right: finally, I pronounced my crayon tower complete. BEHOLD:

I placed a basic rainbow on the very lowest/outer tier. I wasn't able to fit the neon colours in to this rainbow, so they live in their own home on the second tier, along with the metallics, the glitters, and the browns. And then the greys and black and white all live on the very top most tier.

And that is what I did on my Friday night.

This entire post also serves as an explanation to why I haven't had a boyfriend since 2008--something my aunt was wondering about earlier this evening. There you go, Aunt Mary. I may be alone, but at least I have a beautifully organized set of crayons. WITH a telescoping tower.