Scramble, Words and Where is My Time

I may have an OCD disorder.  When I like something, I might become obsessed.  Evidences of this are located throughout my home.  Stamp sets, paper punches, ribbon, and paper are found in abundance in our office.  At a time in my life I couldn't pass Roberts Craft without going inside and finding a way to spend a 40% off coupon.  Then weeds -- if I pull one, it's over.  Physically removing myself from the garden, lawn or flower beds takes all the strength I can muster.  Usually it is accompanied by prodding from my children reminding me of the responsibilities I'm neglecting.

I own an Iphone.  I didn't desire a smart phone for quite some time.  My feelings about cell phones were closely in line with the elderly -- a phone is for talking, period.  Then my heart began to soften.  Being able to check my email anywhere, view my calendar, and most importantly access coupons merchants would honor if displayed by phone.  Sold.

This phone is far from reaching its maximum potential while in my care.  I have no movies and no songs for starters.  I wouldn't put any games on it for some time -- my track record for losing things made me not want to have my children borrowing for their enjoyment.  I have an app to scan bar codes, a flashlight app along with the LDS app and scriptures.

Then I was introduced to games I would enjoy (not Angry Birds and Temple Run).  I started playing Words with Friends a few months ago against Paul and Andy.  What should be a quick game transformed into torment.  I stare at my playing options for 30 minutes at a time, trying to make a word that could award me enough points to stay in the game (Andy and Paul are masters of utilizing triple letter and triple word spaces).  This became almost painful.

Diane introduced me to Scramble with Friends this month -- an electronic version of Boggle with a two minute time limit.  Sign me up.

Not such a good idea.

Over the course of a day, two minutes add up.  I need to blog but it takes more than two minutes to sit down and gather my thoughts.  So instead, I check to see if my turn to play awaits.  Too bad that when I have eight different games in the works two minutes rapidly multiply until twenty minutes have passed and the laundry and dishes are still untouched, my scriptures are on the table and lets not even talk about how many push ups or sit ups I could have done in the same two minutes.  

When I'm waiting to pick up my girls it is a great way to waste time.  But that is the complete extent.

The game has limits to keep me in check - it costs two coins to play.  One coin is earned every twenty minutes with a maximum of fifteen held in the bank and if I have found that many spare free minutes that I run out of coins it is time to re-evaluate my 'spare' time.

Just for the record, Paul consistently beats me, Andy and I are about even and nth is a word.