Crazy? I hope not.

A few weeks back, I went to the doctor and he mentioned that I might have a touch of OCD. I thought this was hil-arious until I started thinking about certain things that I do, and to be honest, I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Does this affect my life? If so, how does it affect it? Do I need to be worried about this? Can I change my behavior? What parts of me are to be blamed for this off-hand diagnosis?

So I just now decided to google OCD. And fortunately, I don’t think I am clinical. I just don’t have all the symptoms, and especially the part about doing something to prevent a dreaded event. I just do things, well, because that is how my mind works. I don’t think the world is going to end or anything.

Samantha has been sick lately, and so I have been home more in the past 3 days than I have since before Memorial Day. And my house is driving. me. insane. Because it is trashed. I have someone come and clean every 2 weeks. So it isn’t “call CPS because the house is unfit for human habitation”…yet. (My beloved person who cleans has to have a HIP REPLACEMENT, and so she won’t be able to clean for at least 6 weeks. I am counting on 8-10, if not longer, but we’ll see.)

I was lying in bed last night, writing this blog in my head, as a way of going to sleep. You see, I have to make a list of the things I want to do in order to be able to allow my mind to rest. (Xanex works too, but my doctor wouldn’t give me that because it is too addictive…geez!) I thought I might allow you a little insight into why my house is still trashed, and to see if anyone else has the same insane, irrational way of thinking. (PS…I am currently eating Rolos for breakfast)

I have at least 5 bins of baby clothes and maternity clothes that need to be put out of sight, into a storage area of some sort. (when we were building our house, I was VERY insistent that there was lots and lots of storage, because women like storage, and I am a woman, and we were hoping to sell the house to a man and a woman…and since most women have at least a little say in things, storage is important.) However, I can’t decide exactly WHERE I would like this storage area to be, and I have those thingys that come in shoeboxes that are supposed to help keep things fresh, but you have to do something to them to get them to work again, but I haven’t done that and am not sure what “that” is, so I don’t want to put the boxes away until I can put the thingys in there and am positive where I’d like to keep them. PLUS, I need to pack up another bin of clothes that Samantha has outgrown, AND burp cloths and such, except those should go in the newborn bin, but that one is full, so I need to empty it out and reorganize it. And she really hasn’t outgrown the clothes YET, so it would almost be premature to pack up another bin. I might run short on clothes.

Fonz swam a lot in the lake this summer, but something was different, and the lake made him stink. Like shit. And typically we didn’t get a chance to give him a bath before we headed back to the lake. So the landing where he spends most of his day is dirty. As in, you can see the dirt on the carpet dirty. And even though we have given him baths, he still smells a little. Like shit. Because even though he is clean, he lies on the landing and reabsorbs the stinky lake smell into his fur and then continues to smell like shit. I have a bottle of carpet cleaner that I BOUGHT one time when I got my carpets professionally cleaned. So it is the same stuff they use, or at least that is what they tell me. But do I use it to clean the landing? No. Because I am convinced that the carpet needs to be professionally cleaned again, and I won’t follow the directions and probably screw up my carpet since I tend to scrub when it says to blot.

We also have a lot of baby stuff that Samantha doesn’t use anymore. Lots. Big things, like…swings. And travel swings. And baby bathtubs (of which there are 2, I am still confused as to why). And bouncy seats…although I might keep one of those out, because I just found out that you aren’t supposed to feed a baby a bottle flat on their back, apparently that is the leading cause of ear infections. And all last week, I fed Sam her bottle on her back while I got ready, and VOILA…she has a double ear infection. Go figure. Anyway, I digress. So I want to put all of this extra stuff away. But I can’t decide where it should go. And how it should be packed up. I mean, if I just put it into a closet, do I need to wrap it up to keep it clean? And how do you wrap up a full size swing? And speaking of closets, we have lots of them. And since we are busy/lazy people, if we see things out and we have guests coming over who we don’t want to see those things, we will throw them in a closet. So most of our closets are full of random crap that I am not even sure what it is or if we even need to keep. So really, if I am going to put this stuff in a closet, I need to clean out the closets and get rid of crap from our college days. OR, I could put it in the crawl space under the hallway leading in from the garage, but there are all kinds of empty boxes and stolen photo albums and things from the wedding that I have thrown in there. So THAT needs to be cleaned out as well. And the last time I was in there, I whacked my head pretty good and broke the light bulb since the space is only 4 feet tall. So I need to replace the light bulb and find a hard hat.

Also, I don’t have pictures of Samantha hanging up in my house. WHAT??!! You say? What kind of a mother ARE you anyway??? Here is the thing. I have lots of pictures hanging up. Many of them are from our wedding. And I spent a LOT of money, not so long ago, on those pictures. So I am not real keen on just putting new ones in and tossing out the old ones. And I’ve got other pictures in frames, but my family or Workaholic’s family are in them, and I like to be reminded that it is not all about me. I do have family that I love. So I bought a couple of new picture frames specifically for Samantha. And I put pictures in them! And asked Workaholic to hang them! And they are still lying on the couch in our room! Where they have been for 6 months!! Yes, I could probably figure out how to hang them myself, except here is the thing. I am married to a CARPENTER. I do think that should have some advantages, right??? Like, having someone else hang up your pictures?? So they won’t fall down when the door slams because you have too many windows open and it is crazy windy outside?

There are other things are bugging me about my house, but those are the biggies. And some stuff, I am just weird about. Take my wood floors for instance. I am a firm believer that mops are gross. And that the proper way to clean a wood floor is on your hands and knees, with a rag. But who has TIME to do that?? And the energy, and the back pain! So yes, my floors get cleaned by my cleaning lady, and I could give a shit how she does them. But if I do them, it has to be the right way. Weird, huh?

After looking at my list, and my excuses, I am thinking that this isn’t a list of OCD things. This is a list of Gail being lazy. If I put those boxes away, it would be out of sight, out of mind. I wouldn’t lie in bed at night, like I do now, wondering how to get those thingys-from-the-shoeboxes reactivated. But it is just getting me to do that…put those boxes away, or break down the swing and make a decision on where I would like to hide it until it is needed again. It is physically hard. And then I wonder if it is just a touch of OCD…like my doctor said.