It's Time for Panic. IT'S PANIC TIME.

AM COMPLETELY COMPLETELY PANICKING ABOUT MY CHILD TRICK-OR-TREATING IN A COUPLE HOURS


ALL THOSE LITTLE TINY GRUBBY HANDS IN ALL THOSE BUCKETS OF CANDY


SO MANY HANDS


COVERED WITH SO MANY BUM-BUM GERMS


OH GOD ALL THE BUM-BUM GERMS


ON ALL THE HANDS


THE SNEEZES


THE RUNNY NOSES


GERMS ALL OVER THE CANDY


ALL THE GERMS


ALL THE GERMS


SOMEONE TALK ME DOWN

/END TRANS

I Should Have Gone Dressed as Sad Panda.

So yesterday was Trick-or-Treat day at my husband's workplace. I got the kids all ready--Maya was a frog and Naomi was a kitty, and we were to go office to office to collect treats. Sounds simple, right?

My big girl, with her hair sprayed frog-green and wearing her frog-green Converse shoes.

My little girl, with her fivehead. Shit, that's a sixhead.

She got that sixhead from her daddy:

But I digress.

So, OK. You knew the second I started this entry that I would be talking about how this trick-or-treating event wound up being a stressful time for me. But the stress started long before the actual trick-or-treating.

• First, while we were still at home, Maya wouldn't shut up about OMG MOM WHEN ARE WE GOING TO TRICK OR TREAT? But I mean, I can't fault her for that. She's a kid. Still, having to say, "At three o'clock" or "in four hours" or "in two hours" or "IN TWENTY FUCKING MINUTES SHUT YOUR TRAP" gets old.

• Second, I couldn't find the black sweater that I wanted to put over Naomi's leotard. My Incredible Hulk of a seven-month-old is wearing a hand-me-down black leotard that we just inherited from an Incredible Hulk of a 5-year-old, and it fits her, so help me God it fits her. Must have been those 'roids I was on whilst pregnant. But the leotard is sleeveless, so I wanted to have her also wear Maya's tiny little half-sweater--you know, those dumb things that people wear that make you think, "Where's the rest of it" or "I hope you paid half price for that bitch"?

We have one of those in black, but we bought it size-wise to fit Maya like a regular sweater, just with the sleeves rolled up a bit, so it wasn't all, why does your sweater only cover your boobs?

Anyway, couldn't find it. Instead of thinking "Oh, I'll use the pink sweater" like many of you would think, I decide to full-on panic. Because I need the BLACK SWEATER. The black one. To match her black leotard. So I panic and race around the house and tear things apart to try to find the BLACK SWEATER. Still can't find it. Fuckballs.

Then I have a burst of inspiration and think, "Say, didn't my firstborn wear a black long-sleeved shirt for Halloween one time?"

Annswer: Yes, she did, two years in a row, actually.

Yes, I know she looks like Chris Farley there. Shut your face.

So Maya wore that fucker two years in a row, and I sorted all her clothes so that Naomi would have them at appropriate times and seasons. SO WHY COULDN'T I FUCKING FIND IT?! WHY JESUS HAROLD CHRIST WHY??

OK. I finally found that got-damn black Halloween shirt, and I put it under Noey's leotard. Crisis narrowly averted, stress mode still on high. Because you can't just turn that shit off.

• Then we load up the car with kids, clothes, bottles, hand sani, sani-hands, etc., and we're a goodly distance down the road when I think "FUUUUUUUUUCK! Did I remember Noey's kitty ears?!" I pull over and look through the stuff in the back. I did. I did remember Noey's kitty ears. See?

Noey's all, "I got Daddy's sixhead, but I got Mommy's deviousness...."

• OK then. We get back on the road. Then, THEN, 2/3 of the long-ass way there, suddenly Maya tells me she's about to throw up. I haul ass off the freeway, have nightmarish visions of the first time we did this (when Maya was two years old and actually did randomly vomit all over her giraffe suit 2/3 of the way to my husband's workplace and I had no working cellphone or towels or anything at all to remedy the situation), and this time, sweat pouring from my brow, I basically tell her, "If you're gonna spew, spew in this" and hand her the trick-or-treating bucket.

• After we get back on the freeway, we are almost to my husband's workplace when Maya once again is screaming in either agony or misery or nausea, and I yank my car off the side of the road, envisioning spewage from here to right over there, and once safely on the shoulder, I ask her to take one finger and point to exactly where it hurts. She is SCREAMING in pain and she points basically what amounts to her mother. fucking. appendix. Are you kidding me? Are you? Are you??

So we sit there awhile, I keep asking her how she's doing, and her story changes, and she's now not at death's door any longer, and finally I am confident that she's OK and doesn't need emergency surgery and we continue to my husband's workplace. The agreed-upon deal was, I will park and call him from the parking lot and he will come fetch us, since his workplace is a very secure situash and I cannot just enter, I will need to be escorted inside. So I circle the lot once or twice, and I see a few parking spots that you could park this in:

But nothing else. Certainly not my, ahem, SUV. (Sorry environment.) Because the parking spots are yay-big:

and the people parking are dicknuggets who take up 1.5 spots each. So I call my husband needing to ask, "Howdy pardner, where the fuck does one put their car when there's nowhere to go in this particular lot, see?" No answer. No answer on his cell, NATURALLY, because whenever I NEED him on the phone, there is NEVER an answer. Ever. Never.  Whenever I call him on his fucking motherfucking fucking fuckball of a fucking cellfuckingphone, he doesn't fucking answer. And it enrages me like flames. It-it- the f--it--flame--flames. Flames, on the side of my face, breathing-breathle--heaving breaths. Heaving breaths...Breathing...

FLAMES.

FUCK. So I circle the lot 283974893476034 more times, and call his cell 283974893476033 more times, and meanwhile my kid is once again telling me her "neck hurts and she's going to barf" and WHAT AM I GOING TO DO??!

Finally I get Child Alpha calmed down, load Child Beta into her stroller, collect everything I think I need (Sani-Kids, Purell, kitty ears, etc.), but naturally forget her bottles, which we'll need later but won't have, and walk into the reception area, hoping they know my husband's direct desk phone number because HE WON'T FUCKING ANSWER HIS CELL EVEN THOUGH HE'S EXPECTING OUR CALL AND WE ARE ON TIME DOWN TO THE MILISECOND (sorry, someone's still bitter), but luckily, as I am about to request he be paged, he sheepishly comes down a couple floors and greets us there.

OK. So from there, we start the actual trick-or-treating. And the real stress can begin. Up until now it was just shenanigans.

• You see, NOW, I have to meet my husband's coworkers (which means handshakes galore, OH MY FUCKING GOD, and one lady's hand was not only cold but WET).

• In particular, I have to meet my husband's directly-across-the-hall teammate, who happens to be fucking beautiful, a living version of Jasmine, but even more fair and more exotic, and who I know comes in to sink into his office couch and chat with him on the regular and ask his opinion on everything under the sun, which I find most inappropriate.

Oh and how glad I am that he gets to stare at her through their windows across the hallway all day long, every day, while I'm at home with two-day-old hair and wearing sweatpants and barfed-on shirts.

• Anyway. After the Jasmine encounter, which left me feeling oh-so confident and sexually desirable, then we trick-or-treat, going office-to-office.  I have to observe as my kid digs out candy from a thousand bowls throughout three floors of the enormous building (where every bowl has seen the likes of 59027592743 other kids' sticky nasty gross hands).

• And then I have to sit there silently while Maya makes projects (like decorating mini-pumpkins by using glue and pens and stickers and things that 239087325 other kids have touched).

• The baby by now is getting antsy and hungry, and I realize I've left her bottles in the car way the hell downstairs and outside in the lot. Great. More things to stress over. A grumpy baby and no bottles.

• And finally we all have to eat snacks like mini-wieners wrapped in puff pastry (served by using spoons and forks and tongs that 923839875 other people have spooned and forked and tonged with, in containers no doubt kept below the proper safe temperature, but who's counting).

It is at this point that my brain is in cold sweats and my underarms need pantyliners. My husband asks me if I am OK and I manage to shake my head and squeak, "No."

Why is this so hard for me? All it is is dressing my kids up (adorably so), driving 25 miles, going door-to-door at a large office, getting free candy (and who doesn't love free candy? except that I am thinking, "how am I going to disinfect every single piece of it?), making some pumpkin art, going "fishing" for some bracelets, and snacking on pigs in a blanket? This was just trick-or-treating. What is so hard about this?? I don't know, but I was freaking out. FREAKING OUT. 

This. Is. My. Life.

It's Her Birthday and I'll Have a Panic Attack If I Want To.

So today Maya had her 4th birthday party! It was crazy hectic, as usual, getting there on time to decorate and get it all together before guests arrived, putting up balloons and streamers and tablecloths and napkins and plates and cups and then later managing the ordering of pizzas and the feeding of the guests and the playing of kids' games and the eating of cake and the opening of soooo many gifts, but we pulled it off. Sigh. Pizza and gifts. First world problems.

Oh, and of course, there was the internally freaking out when anyone who hadn't Purelled in my direct line of vision was holding the baby and touching her hands. Grandma H I'm glaring looking at you.

Not to mention, one of my friends showed up and her first words to me about her daughter were, "Sorry, little S has a little cold." GREAT. Panic level orangish-red. Who am I kidding. Scarlet, blood red all the way.

Luckily my BFF and frequent bum-bum blog commenter chesea was there, and talking to her distracted me and calmed me down. :)

Here are some snapshots of the day. I simply have to include a bunch unrelated to my OCD, because they're so damn cute, but then I've included all the ones with Purell in the shots, kind of as your OCD-Where's-Waldo, to make it apropos to this blog.

My ridiculous attempt at a frog cake, which Maya insisted she wanted:

Frog cupcakes. I couldn't control the squirty frosting thing very well. The unevenness and asymmetry of this arrangement also triggers some form of OCD in me as well, let it be known.

My beauty doing the Pee-Pee Dance:

My beauty doing the Bum-Bum Dance:

My beauty standing still for a milisecond.

BAM! PURELL! Hint hint much??

Pin the tail on the donkey. Birthday girl goes first:

And she nails it (actually I think she hung it on Eeyore's ballsack. Bygones).

OK, now can you Spot the Purells?

And finally, shouldn't blowing out candles be outlawed about now? I mean come on. What an outdated, totally gross tradition. We're in Twenty-oh-eleven now. People should really come with their own thingymabob that douses candles, and there should be no huffing and effluvia involved.

Luckily my kid was healthy as a healthy horse, but I ca-RINGE at this part of every other birthday party. I MEAN GROSS.

Anyway. There you have it. Cute kids, frogs, FWPs, and Purell. It was a fun day, but when I got home I had to take five Xanax, 10,000 units of Vitamin D, and then disinfect all the toys she got with Clorox wipes.

Monday Musings.

Can you even imagine all the bum-bum germs in a foam party? That shit can't be chlorinated. And I mean, it's soap, but so is the filthy stuff you rinse OFF your hands. Soap doesn't automatically make it clean. Soap doesn't disinfect ALL THOSE DANCING BUM-BUMS.

You think you're having good, soapy fun...

But here's what's really going on:

Hoookay...y'all g'head and enjoy your sudsy sudsy bum-bum germs! 

...I'll sit this one out.

PS: You'll probably have to be a regular, long-time reader 'round these parts to fully appreciate that second photo and all its component bits. snort.

I'm One Dust Bunny Away From Going Gilbert Grape on This Fucker.

Sometimes I get so down on my house, so overwhelmed. I clean constantly, I clean all day long, I clean the same things over and over again. I wipe, I scrub, I disinfect. But the place never looks clean. My husband comes home and has no idea I've even done anything, because he can't tell. There's just so much clutter, and so much stuff I'm never able to get to. Sometimes I just want to go Gilbert Grape on this mofo and burn it to the ground. No matter who or what is still in the upstairs.

If there's always one thing I've wanted to treat myself to, it would be a deep, deep housecleaning. Especially with all these deals I see on Living Social or Groupon ("Three hours of deep house cleaning for only $49!" or "Two 4-hour sessions of all natural, organic cleaning for just $69! Regularly $249!").

I want to do it. I want so badly to do it. I want to come home to a sparklingly fresh home cleaner than I could ever get it. But I can't.

As I've mentioned, even though my OCD means that all the touchable surfaces in my house are bleach-clean, like anyone else the dust and clutter and grime in my house does tend to build up in the nooks and crannies. I may have cleaned the deepest, darkest recesses of S's house like a whirling dervish and sanitized like a white demon, but that was easy because I was starting with a clean slate. My house is already so lived in that the thought of a true spring cleaning, like, where you get out an old toothbrush and scrub the baseboards, makes me want to faint. I do not have that kind of motivation. I may have OCD but, as mentioned, I am one hell of a lazy ass.

So the perfect solution would be to hire a housecleaner! Right? Right! Right? ...Right?

Except I can't bear the thought. Because I'm so afraid that my house will end up germier than it started. Sure, it will be neat and tidy and glisteningly fresh: clean to the naked eye. But what of the germs? OH GOD WHAT OF THE GERMMMMS?

I would have no control over whether the cleaning person used the same sponge to clean the floors and the counters, or if she used the same tools at the last home as she used at my home. I would have no idea if she changed gloves after cleaning the bathroom before she went to work on the kitchen. I have no control over whether she has an eye for cross-contamination. I would be a sweating, dry-heaving mass of What Ifs. I would be roiling bundle of nerves. I would be beside myself with panic.

So it wouldn't exactly be a decadent luxury for me, not if it caused this much fucking anxiety. Christ.

Thus, every time I see a Living Social deal that I can't pass up, I have to pass it up. Because I can't see myself calling them up and being like, "So, I know this is weird, but do you cater to people with OCD? Do your maids take off their shoes before entering the premises? Do they have all-new tools and scrubbies? Do any of your employees have infrared eyesight and the ability to see germs as if they were hotblooded robbers on the getaway? Just wondering, because I've got a touch of the crazies, see."

Sucks. Because I really, really, really, really want someone to come in and clean all the things I never get to. I want to come home to the freshest, cleanest house I've ever had. I really really want it, and my house really really needs it. But I don't think my brain can allow it.

Not to mention...

Why is the Merry Maids car designed like a slug?

This does not inspire confidence, guys.

Anyway, maybe this is another one for Mr. Obama's Job Creation Act: Housecleaners for the OCDers among us. They would remove their shoes upon entry or at least wear shoe hairnets; they would wear rubber gloves and change them with delicious regularity; they would use new (straight from the package) sponges; they would use all new tools or at least those that had been certified disinfected; they would clean the rooms in order of germiness: bedroom and living rooms first, then kitchen, then bathroom, with all new sponges and rags and gloves each time; they would use vast amounts of bleach; and so forth. Maybe they'd even have an inspector watching them at all times, like my Cook Area Inspector (linked above). This would be Cleaning Area Inspector. They would ensure no cross-contamination. Then maybe I could do it. Then maybe I could hire a housecleaner. God knows how much I'd love to, God knows that even though I disinfect constantly, this whole place needs a good head-to-toe scrubbing.

Anyway for now, I will have to suffer through having a cluttered but Cloroxed homestead, and deal with dirty base molding, dusty picture frames, and a cobweb or two on the ceiling. Sigh.