There's Clean, and Then There's Clean-Clean.

Dear husband, my honey, my one, my only, you may want to skip this one.

And dear people who think I'm throwing my MIL under the bus: (1) You know you've wanted to do this at some point yourself; (2) this is my place to vent, after all; and (2) well, just pretend I'm not taking to someone whose family I married into. That should make it OK.

...

As I may have briefly mentioned, while I am a germaphobe in a hardcore way, I'm not so much a clutterphobe. I mean, don't get me wrong, clutter drives me apeshit. Apeshit I tell you.

I get near panic attacks when I look around and see how much goddamn junk, trinkets, decorations, accoutrement, and useless stuff on shelves we have in the house, or how dusty things might be, but while those drive me crazy, I don't seem to have the energy to be arsed to always deep clean those things, and my OCD level only gets to about blue, maybe yellow on a bad day.

So while out countertops are practically sterile in my home and you could eat of any surface of your choosing, the kitchen table is always piled high with my daughter's art projects, or the food pantry shelves are always shoved tightly and spilling over with bags and boxes and cans of food, and there may be a fine coating of dust over the harder-to-get to areas. My house, as mentioned, is not a Stepford home, not by a longshot. I have OCD, but I am a lazy fucker.

In stark comparison is my mother-in-law's house. Her house is pristine...to the naked eye. I mean, this woman cleans the base molding, the ceilings, the underside of cabinets, everything. She has boundless energy to keep things tidy, which is admirable. But I've seen her clean, and her cleaning method is thus: Take a white washcloth and "Wipe Things Down." Everything. With that same white washcloth. The result is stunning--a gleaming white, pristine abode.

Every nook and cranny wiped, wiped, wiped. With that trusty old white washcloth damp with plain old white water. So you will have a dust- and surface- dirt-free home...but you will have germs ga-fucking-lore. You will have floor germs on your counter, and you will have sink germs on your faucet handles, and you wll have bathroom germs on your kitchen table, and you will have a small black poodle named Argus sitting next to the sink, on the food-prep countertop, at any given time, next to the dinner and dessert she's making. You think I'm kidding? Take a peek at this, amigo:

So basically, you will have bum-bum germs on every other touchable in your entire homestead. Dog bum-bum germs and otherwise.

schooch scooch, anal worms, ain't no thang, where's my trusty white washcloth?

So while her home looks positively sterile, and I'm am jealous of that fact to some degree, it is probably one of those more unsterile places you can go. There is nothing clean about taking a damp, dank washcloth to every surface in your home just to get the visible dirt off, especially in a home where no one ever washes their hands and there is never even any usable handsoap in the bathroom. You'll find fancy lotions, and decorative, unwrapped Indian imported soaps, but nothing to actually clean your got-damn hands with. I've actually been known to go into her shower and dig out some Oil of Olay Body Wash and place it passively-aggressively next to the sink and then leave nonchalantly as if to say, "Uhhh, you FORGOT something here."

No, I'd rather live in my somewhat dusty, very kids'-toy-cluttered abode, but where all the touchable surfaces have been Cloroxed clean, than her immaculate-looking white, sparse, beautiful condo with bum-bum germs all about.

No offense, honey. And please never tell your mother about this blog.

I think I mentioned this before, but while I'm burning bridges and alienating those I love, let me add that this is a lady who I witnessed wipe down a toilet and then continue on wiping down everything else in the bathroom with that same rag, including countertops. She also one time flushed a paper towel down the toilet with her bare hands (lifted the toilet seat, flushed said offending paper towel, then closed the seat and lid), and then, without washing her hands, continued straightaway--we're talking IMMED.--to finish preparing our Thanksgiving meal. Wait, not quite immed.--in between, she wanted to hold our infant daughter. My husband and I were, awkwardy, like, "Oh, did you, um, want to wash first?" and she, offended and totally obliviously, said, "Why? I didn't use the bathroom. I didn't go potty." And we, dumbfounded and sputtering, were like, "But you...the flusher...you touched the flusher and...you...the...it....fuck. never mind." We just had to bite our tongues. Because she just didn't get that she touched one of the germiest places in the home, even though, no, she didn't USE the bathroom to, say, defecate. I mean, why does she think people do this:

She just doesn't get it. There was no getting through to her that the flusher itself was full of shit-germs that we didn't care to have, say, in our cranberry sauce or stuffing or mashers and gravy or on our firstborn.

But, her house always looks lovely. It is merely a horror house of cross-contamination. Bygones.

I wish there were a happy medium. I wish my house looked at nice as hers, but was freaking DEAD STERILE like mine is.

I wish I could find a nice happy mixture of this:

Still, I'd take true cleanliness with clutter, over the mere appearance of cleanliness, anyway. If, that is, you can forage a path through the kids' toys and ignore the dust on the baseboards and the junk up on the shelves.

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.

Another bum-bum song.

So awhile back I posted about how the Chordettes' song should really be called the "Bum Bum Song," but now mommamaynard reminds me of Tom Green's Bum Bum song:

Be careful. There are bum-bums everywhere out there.






(Did we ever think this guy was funny?)

Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday!

Public sandboxes are bacteria breeding grounds. 


Fact: If it's a public sandbox, or even your own sandbox left uncovered, there is no way to keep cats and critters out of it, and they will consider it a public litter box. Hear me now, believe me later.


Your child is at risk if they stick their fingers in their mouth after playing in sand soiled with animal feces. This can cause pinworms, roundworms, and hookworms, which can lead to fever, stomach pains, and intense itching of the bum-bum. 

They are also contagious and are spread from person to person, or by touching bedding, food, or other items contaminated with the worm's eggs. 


Children are especially vulnerable to hookworms, A hookworm infection occurs when larvae come into contact with human skin, through contaminated soil or feces (OR SANDBOXES). They penetrate the skin, making their way through the lungs to the small intestine, where they latch on and grow into adults, laying more eggs. They feed off the blood of the infected person, which can lead to anemia. 


And also a serious gross-out effect.

The Hygiene Hypothesis, P. Much Take Three

So Darlena over at ParenTwin wrote up her rebuttal to my post. My original post, "P. Much," was here, and Dar wrote up a fine fine piece entitled The Hygiene Hypothesis, Take Two (Take Two--OMG--twins--pun intended??).

And now that I've spent two days finger-babbling and belaboring unrelated points, alas I realized that none of what I was writing was the rebuttal-of-a-rebuttal like I had intended. For two reasons, I think: (1) that Darlena didn't really disagree, per se, with the gist of my post and my points on hygiene and why the hypothesis stinks--rather, she just explained that there are certain risks that she's willing to take, whereas I am not; and (2) that it turned into more of an introspection on my part, because of some of Dar's statements.

Crapsicle!! So much for the big war we had planned!

Anyway, I will say this, so I can at least post something to do with the Hygiene Hypothesis: What I hate most about it (and about people's uninformed spouting off about it) is that people take it too far. People wildly misinterpret it. And while I think that even at its true core, the Hygiene Hypothesis is lamesauce and ridicballs, all it basically says is that early exposure to allergens and infectious agents causes fewer incidences of asthma, eczema, and allergies in general. It doesn't say that by catching tons and tons of colds and flu as kids makes you less likely to be sick from them later. Getting a lot of colds in preschool doesn't mean you're not going to be allergic to peanuts, doesn't mean you won't get eczema, and doesn't mean you will get fewer colds later, goddammit.

Not to mention, there are so, so many other issues to take into consideration. Some people think that the increase in childhood asthma could be related to swimming pools, for baby Jesus' sake. Then you have to consider possible over-exposure to certain allergens, and the way children are fed, and where they're from, and endless other contributing factors:

"There are many other hypotheses which aim to explain the increase in allergies in developed nations, many of which are also related to the other. A few other major areas of focus in the literature include infant feeding, over-exposure to certain allergens and exposure to certain pollutants. Infant feeding covers a range of topics which include whether babies are breast fed or not and for how long, when they are introduced to solid foods and the type of these foods, whether they are given cow's milk and even the types of processing that the milk undergoes."

So, you see, there are dozens of hypotheses that aim to figure out why certain conditions like asthma are on the rise. But for some reason, people latched on to Mr. Strachan's Hygiene Hypothesis with an iron grip and refuse to let go, claiming that illness is somehow healthy, people who also refuse to use their noodles and inject a little common sense here and there.

Not to mention, there are studies that come to a completely different conclusion and argue against the Hygiene Hypothesis:

"The 'hygiene hypothesis' postulates that reduced exposure of children to microorganisms and parasites increases the probability that they will develop immunologic disorders including allergic diseases.  It has been used to explain the increased incidence of such diseases and the increase in asthma in developed countries compared to underdeveloped countries.  There is some experimental evidence supporting this hypothesis.  However, the epidemiological data are not uniformly consistent with this hypothesis.  A recent Australian study (Ponsonby et al, International Journal of Epidemiology, 2008, 37, 559–569) showed a reduction in the prevalence of asthma and hay fever without evidence for a decrease in hygiene. Asthma prevalence has also been dropping in other developed countries.  In addition, asthma is more prevalent in poor inner city neighborhoods in the US and these areas are unlikely to be more hygienic than the more affluent areas.  In addition, improved hygiene is not the only environmental difference between developed and underdeveloped more rural countries.  For example, in more developed countries people tend to live in tight buildings which are fabricated from and contain artificial materials which emit chemicals that could possibly facilitate the development of allergies. [Further,] It is in fact well established that poor sanitation practices contribute to high infant and child mortality rates in underdeveloped countries."

Another study also found evidence arguing against the Hygiene Hypothesis:

"The study by Dutch investigators at the Erasmus University found although children in day care got more colds and other infections, they were just as likely as other children to go on to develop asthma or another allergy by the age of eight. The children who went to nursery and who had older siblings had more than quadruple the risk of frequent chest infections and double the risk of wheezing in early life, with no obvious pay off in terms of later protection from allergy."

So which is it? Which hypothesis to believe? Why did those hypotheses never catch on? Why are people so quick to say, "It's OK, she's puking up last night's fish & chips now, but she's boosting her immune system with every heave!" Well, while you're trying to make up your mind, just consider this quick and simple question: Dirty hands or clean hands? Which is healthier? I remind you, we learned this in kindergarten. So mankind, quit telling me that my child will be healthier after poking the dog's butthole and then eating a bowl of popcorn.

(Or you may just want to pick up a box or two of dog bum-bum covers.)

Next up: The introspective blog that Dar's post also inspired.

I've Had It With These Motherf*cking Poops in These Motherf*cking Potty Chairs!

Forget Snakes on a Plane. We've got Dukes down the Drain, and I'm over it.

Ever since we potty-trained Maya (it's been over a year now), she has used her little white plastic Bjorn potty chair. For pee-pees and poo-poos. It was the best option for awhile because we could keep it where we needed it, so it could always be close at hand bum-bum.

Then we moved it into Maya bedroom so that she could go potty if she needed to during a nap or the night. (Which she still has yet to do, anyway.) And I know, gross, a potty in a bedroom.

But the worst part of it has been cleaning out the poops. I just absolutely dread hearing, "Mommmmmm, I went poo-poo!" (1) because of the wiping of the bum-bum and (2) because of the cleaning of the potty. Yaaarrgggh.

So after having Maya assume standing pike position so I can wipe her bum-bum, I take the potty bowl into the bathroom, open the toilet seat lid (which we always keep down, and so should you!), and dump the lump. Then I clean it out with at least three Lysol wipes, then I spray it down with Lysol spray. Heavily.

Then I wash like I've never washed before.

The reason I don't have Maya use the regular toilet is because of the way kids grip it and grasp it and clamber up on it. Then they sit there and usually hold the edges of the toilet seat as they go.

(I'm not the first one this has occurred to.)

Look! Even Mr. Hanky uses Potty Mitts!

And yeah, I know I could just teach her to always wash her hands after using the toilet, but she goes potty covert-like, without telling me, and I know she'd forget to wash or even use hand-sani sometimes. Plus, I'm afraid she'll fall in, like I did when I was her age, emotionally scarring me forever.


Anyway, the time has come. I'm tired of scraping motherfucking dukes out of a motherfucking bowl. Plus, she's entering preschool next month (another source of agonizing anxiety for me, but that's an entry for another day, child), so I guess I have to teach her how to properly use a toilet and always wash afterward.

Or, just stock up on Potty Mitts.

Maybe if she gets really good at toilet hygiene, 

I'll get her these cozy lil critters as a Yay For You! present:

How I Spent my Friday, Friday, Gotta Get Down on Friday

Let's say there's this girl. And she needs some fancier clothes for some upcoming events.

Let's also say this girl has rampant germ OCD.

And just for fun, let's throw in a new fact: This girl also has a severe phobia of lice and bedbugs.

What's the solution?

I KNOW, I KNOW!

VALUE VILLAGE!!11!3@!!

...Er, well, on second thought, that might not have been the best choice for someone like me.

Let me tell you, I am not too proud for Value Village.

I am just too OCD.

But anyway, because I have a sick twisted love and adoration for La Village and because I didn't want to spend $400 I went anyway. Honestly, I really do love to get clothes there. It's just that...it's just....well, I'm both a cheapskate, and someone with OCD. So yesterday, the cheapskate in me won out. :) To La Village it was!



OK. So when I've taken my older daughter there, then entire time is spent with my telling her, yes, as usual, "DON'T TOUCH! HANDS OUT!" I walk rigidly through the narrow aisles of clothes, and my anxiety meter explodes as Maya hides in the racks of dresses. I expect her to climb back out with lice and fleas and bedbugs visibly sproinging about her person.

And she drags her hand along through the clothes as she walks, and I'm thinking, "Maya! You don't know whose bum-bums those jeans have been on! Do you have any idea how filthy the seat of one's pants are??"* And then of course she'll touch her face or mouth or nose and it's more, "MAYA! HANDS OUT!!"

*This is why I also gag violently am uncomfortable when someone hops up and sits on their kitchen countertops. I'm like, "Are you even serious right now with that shit?"

Then when it comes time to try on the clothes I've selected...oh boy. Here is how it goes.

1. I try at all times to not step on the floor. If I have to take my shoes off to get some pants on, I step out, pull the leg up, and then step back ON THE TOP of my shoe, just so I don't have to get my socks dirty. Yesterday, I was wearing flip-flops, so it was much easier to just either keep them on (as I tried on skirts) or step out, pull up a leg, and slide my foot back into my sandal. And my feet aren't the only things I worry about getting nasty as I try on pants. Trying on pants is gross. Just pure gross. Their crotch on your crotch. I said a quick prayer to the Patron Saint of Pubic Lice, took a deep breath, tried on the jeans, and then whipped them off as fast as I could.

Holy shit. Even as I was typing this, and I swear to you people this is the truth, a commercial came on the TV in the background for pestworld.org, talking about bedbugs. How did they know? How did they know?!?

Anyway.

2. I try at all times to get my child to NOT TOUCH! She wants to touch the hangers and climb up on the little seat and put her hands on the mirror and such, and even that is too much for me. Why does she move so much? Why couldn't I have given birth to a metal soldier?

3. I freak out about my hair. I have very long hair right now, and didn't bring along a pony-holder. So as I'm easing these shirts over my head, all I could think of was "lice lice lice lice lice lice lice lice lice lice I'M COLONIZED!"

4. After making my purchase, and getting in my car and using preposterous amounts of hand sanitizer, I drive home. And the very second I am home, entering through the garage into the laundry room (well, but pausing to wash my hands first), I strip bare-ass nekked (because I've put MY clothes on after THEIR clothes have totally germed up/liced up/bedbugged up my body, so my clothes are contaminated too). I throw the Value Village clothes in the washer on hot (and later do my own clothes separately on hot), and dry them on hot too. While they are washing, I dash to the shower, still naked as a jaybird, and scrub. If my daughter has come with me, into the shower she goes too, and we scrub right along together.

5. I wash my hair twice with a deep-cleansing shampoo, and then I put about a gallon of super slick, slippery conditioner on my hair and leave it on for as long as I can. I heard one time that one way to kill lice is to put mayonnaise--yes mayonnaise--on your head for a long time, because it literally suffocates the lice. So in my mind, I was doing a mini-version of that. I slathered my hair with conditioner, then scrubbed my face and body with Dial, then took a long leisurely time shaving my legs. Then I brushed through my slick hair, imagining that I was brushing out all manner of bedbuggery, and finally rinsed. Eighteen hours later, my shower was done. heh.

So while I love me some Value Village for their wild & crazy deals, it's a truly anxiety-riddled ordeal to go there. I can't tell you how grimy I feel when I leave.

And that, friends, is a tale of what it's like for a girl who has OCD and a phobia of creepy-crawlies to visit her local Value Village!

Really, Rebecca? More like:

I feel like I need to go shower after just writing this.

Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday!

When washing your hands, the parts of your hands most 

often overlooked are the thumbs. Specifically, the 

backs and fleshy parts of your thumbs.

And at the risk of getting too personal (HA! HA!), let me pose a challenge to you: The next time you are wiping your bum-bum after a nice dukerpoop (as my daughter calls it), please take extra special care to notice your thumbs and that they basically drag along your inner ass cheek as you wipe.

So please wash those fuckers with a little extra loving care.

The Acid Test.

This is a hard one to blog about, because it involves a dear friend of mine. She doesn't know about this blog, though, so don't worry your pretty little heads or wring your grimy little hands.


---


So lately I've been wondering if I'm "getting better." See, I was seeing a shrink for awhile, not for talk therapy but for hardcore meds, because this has gone on too long and there are parts of it that are too much for me to bear. The weight of this can be crushing. And none of it, I feel, is something I can "talk through." So off to Mr. PhD it was, at $300 an hour. It's cool, we gots mad insurance though my husband's badass job, right?*


*I discovered a month later that Mr. Dr. is not a preferred provider, so we owe the $300 deductible and 20% of every other visit I had, whereas usually every medical visit of any kind is completely, 100% covered. Surprise!deductible.  Shitballs.

Anyway, at first Mr. Dr. was aiiiight, starting me off on a regimen of meds that he felt would work. He also quite literally prescribed, on a prescription pad, one hour of pure alone-time, each and every day, where I could do whatever I wanted, in total peace. I straight-up laughed in his face. Do you have children, Mister Doctor? I wanted to inquire.


I liked him a lot at first, but then he started rubbing me the wrong way. After a few less than stellar visits, one time I showed up at the bum-bum crack of 4 pm, my precise appointment time, and I waited in the office, alone, no receptionist in sight, for 25 minutes. Eventually Mr. Dr. emerged from his office with his previous patient, unapologetic, and soon after, we set about having our session. Our session had been scheduled as a 30-minute block that time. At the end of the appointment, he said to me, clearly irritated, "We got a little off track today. This went on for almost an hour, so next time we need to stick to the timeframe." I was struck dumb and just stood there and nodded, then waddled off with my tail twixt my legs like a dog what doesn't even know that it did something wrong.

When I got in my car, 1.5 minutes later, my car clock verified that it was 5 pm on the nose. Our appointment had run 35 minutes, max. More like 32.5. Not one hour. I was like, "Is HE the one who needs meds? Did he not realize his previous patient ran 25 bloody minutes over?!" It actually really upset me, for days and days, and kept me up at night! (I couldn't let go of it, for some reason, and actually considered emailing him to say, "Kind Sir, are you not aware that it was the extreme tardiness  your previous patient which caused our 30-minute session to end at such a late hour? I demand an apology within the fortnight.") So that kind of put the last nail in the coffin. I didn't want to see him anymore, and certainly not at $300 a MF hour.


So instead I started seeing my general practitioner, whom I generally love anyway. I figured, if this was all about brain meds, and the psychiatrist got me started, she could continue from there. She ended up disagreeing with some of his thoughts and choices of meds (what's so wrong with taking large doses of benzos? o hai five klonopin and 6 xanax!! Er, never mind), and we worked out a slightly different med situation. I have been and will be continuing to work with her. I've been feeling better at times, and when the moment came where I thought to myself, "OSHITZ, Maya picked a crayon off the floor of the restaurant and then continued to use it, eh, fuck it, who cares!!!", I thought, "Hey! I'm getting better!!"

Well, then came the Acid Test. 

A couple months ago, I hung out with a friend and her kids at their house. Both her kids are often sick. They are a family that just doesn't put the same importance on handwashing as I do, and it seems that everyone almost always has some illness or another. But because I know how often their kids get sick, every time I see one of them grab Maya's hand and trot off to go play their room, that vise inside me tightens. My brain sweats. My heart races. I want to scream out "NO! DON'T TOUCH HER!!" This sounds irrational, and yes, I GET THAT IT IS TO YOU, but it is not irrational to ME.* And I cannot stress enough to you how often and how badly these children and their parents get sick. It is one fever after one snotty nose after one deep hacking cough after another. Rinse, repeat. So every time I get invited over, or my friend wants to get all the kids together to play, I die a little.


And every time I visit them, almost without fail, the very. next. day, my friend Facebooks that her kids have fallen ill. And I think to myself, "Fuckshit!! I'mone die of teh plague." 


*No, you don't have to tell me that this is my brain making excuses for my behaviors. I am aware that I have a disorder. However, many if not most of my behaviors and actions (handwashing, affinity for Lysol wipes, etc.), I will stand firmly by, disorder or not. There is right and there is wrong, and while I can be "extreme," I am also most assuredly right. pthtbhtbhb. 

So a couple months ago, this friend (whom, honestly, I dearly love, despite her differing ideas and opinions on hygiene) invited us over to graciously cook us up a chicken dinner. After welcoming us into her home, she wanted to hold the baby, and she knows me well enough to understand that the Hot Tin Slider House Rules state in no uncertain terms that if you want to hold the baby, you wash your hands first. So God bless her, she washed her hands. After she held little Naomi, we all went into the kitchen to help with the meal. She started the chicken.


And listen. I don't mean to throw my friend under the bus. I am only here to report on what I saw, what I as someone who has OCD sees and notices. That is what this blog is about. What do I see, through my eyes? What do I notice, as someone who is obsessed with noticing germs? 


And here is what I saw and noticed: chickin-drippins, they was getting everwhere. And her chicken-hands were mixing up the salad I brought, and touching the counter, and opening doorknobs, and all over the refrigerator, and so forth. She would use her hands to open the lid of the garbage can that literally had streaming ribbons of wet God-knows-what on it, and then shove something deep inside said garbage receptacle, and then carry on with food prep. The chicken sat out a good two hours before being cooked. She also kept using utensils (spatulas, fork-prongs, grabby-things, etc.), that she had dug out of the sink. The sink, FFS, where other dirty dishes lie, where raw meat has dripped, where hands have been washed overtop (well, OUR hands anyway), where all manner of epic, epic germs live. The sink, where an estimated 500,000 bacteria per square inch wriggle and writhe and mock me. Jesus mother of Mary. So, our chicken dinner got cooked up with a filthy sink spatula. Awesome. My soul cried.


Occasionally, she'd exit the kitchen to go help her daughter blow her nose, or help her son wipe his bum-bum after he screeched out, "Mom, I poooooped in the potttttty!!"


Not to mention, there was a pet turtle. GOD IN HEAVEN A TURTLE.* Kid #1 was touching it and letting it crawl all about. I kept trying to quietly get Kid #1 to wash his hands, but he wouldn't. 


*Salmonella central.

In addition, my friend's boyfriend/babydaddy was sneezing, and both the children were looking feverish. The boyfriend actually asked his listless son at one point, "Are you feeling sick?" Cue my total mental meltdown. My heart shrunk ten sizes that day.


Then Kid #2 wanted to play with the baby. If you remember the Slider House Rules, you'll know that I make no bones about it, and I told her that she had to wash before doing so. But she'd wash, then come over and yank at the baby's hands for a few minutes, then go roll all over the carpet, yank a boogin out her nose, scratch at her wee bum-bum, shove a hand down her crotch, possibly even go pat Turkey the Turtle, and then come back for more baby touching. I didn't know how to stop her, without looking like a paranoid mental patient having heart palpitations and a severe case of dry-mouth. Which I am and was.


Now listen again. None of this makes my friend or her family BAD. It means they don't see what I see. My friend was raised differently, and she does not suffer my disorder, and she just plain and simple doesn't worry about the things I do. And again, none of this is to say "Wow, what a terrible person she is." It is to try to share MY experience, to show it to you through the eyes of someone suffering from intense germ anxiety. To show you how my eyes act as a Crimestopper Chopper 4 helicopter pilot with infrared night goggles, where germs are the hot-blooded robbers on the getaway. I see them. I see the germs, I feel the germs. I see everything, and it causes horrible anxiety.  


And that anxiety can ruin everything. Even lovely evenings with true friends, whom I love regardless of sink germs, and who love me regardless of the fact that they see me as totally apeshit bananas crazy in the noggin. My beautiful friend, she can be a saint to put up with me sometimes, I swear. This doesn't mean I don't wish she would take care with the chickin-drippins though. 

So the day was full of all the things I fear most. Raw-meat germs. Bum-bum germs. Escherichia coli germs. Sea-creature germs. BOY GERMS! Just kidding, I'm not six. And most of all, cold and flu germs. Sigh.


Alas, what should have been a pleasant dinner with a favorite couple and their darling children turned out to be something that caused me to panic. I played along, joked, laughed, talked, even forced down a few bites of Chicken Con Staphylococcus Aureus (an exotic recipe she picked up during her travels) (I kid, I kid), but inside I felt miserable. 


And I was just waiting, waiting for the next day, when I knew that my friend would be Facebooking, "My poor darlings have come down with 103-degree fever, Roseola, purple spots, Dengue fever, black hairy tongue, severe food poisoning, cold sores, pink-eye, swine flu, and The Grippe!"


Finally we made our exit. I make light of it, but all the way home I sobbed. I cried. I cried from the pressure that had been building up inside me. I cried because I was afraid. I cried because I'd wanted to have a good time and my disorder simply wouldn't let me. I cried because I feel helpless and hopeless. I cried because my friends are so generous and beautiful, and yet I can't always be comfortable around them. I cried because I don't want my infant to get black hairy tongue.


Now, granted, I don't usually feel THIS much anxiety when visiting other people. (So if you're my friend and you're reading this, honestly, my OCD-meter is not turned up this high when I am with you. Because you are not this particular couple with their particular couple-o-kids.) But it's still not fair that I couldn't enjoy myself. It's not fair that I spent the entire time panicked. It's not fair that I can't let Maya play with her two little best friends without wanting to scream, "OK, BUT DON'T TOUCH EACH OTHER!!"

And it's not fair that nothing's going to fix this. There is no pill I can take that will make me forget that there are germs on things. There is no pill I can take that will let me dreamily lounge around on my dear friend's deep, cozy velour couch (OMFG LICE) with an icy bev in hand, happily chatting away whilst her children are hacking and snotting seven feet away and playing Ring Around the Rosie with my daughters, hand in hand. There is, it always seems, no hope.


Because that day was the Acid Test. Are all my pills working? AM I GETTING BETTER? AM I??










No.

This Is Not My Beautiful House

OCD is funny sometimes. Well, I mean, no, not funny, not fun. But odd. You might think that because I'm a germ nut that everything about my life is sterile and spotless and perfectly orderly. You might expect to walk into my home and find sparkling, pine-fresh perfection. But my house is far from perfect.

First of all, it's too damn small for the four of us, so it's cluttered. Stuff everywhere, on every ledge, on every shelf, on every countertop, in every storage bin, in baskets. Stuff. Stuffy stuff. Everywhere. And it really does bother me (sometimes to the point of a near panic attack), but apparently not enough to be arsed to actually do a massive overhaul and throw shit out.

Plus, part of my OCD is that I show small signs of h...h..hoarding (YIKES)--I have an extremely hard time letting go of things even when they are of no use to me. It's not like I hoard newspapers, or Taco Bell wrappers, or cigarette butts--but trinkets and things that "just sit there," I can't get rid of. And my reasoning is because someone gave it to me. Someone cared enough to think of me, and someone spent money on it. (And if you remember, we was broke as a joke growing up, so I've never been one to waste my money, or someone else's money.) So how could I throw away, donate, or even re-sell something that someone gave me? Therefore, I have a massive amount of stuff around the house that Just Sits There. And yes, it drives me apeshit--however, I may have OCD but I'm also a lazy fuck.

Where was I. So yes, the house is cluttered. With things we need, with things we don't, with trinkets and nonsense and bullshit, and most of all with baby things. Toys toys toys. Everywhere.

Our house also gets pretty dusty, and if you look closely you might find that crap in the very corners/crevices of things that is so hard to clean out. There are always clothes on the bedroom floor. My older daughter's room can be a disaster. Our kitchen table is covered in arts and crafts and papers and pens and stray marks and spilled glitter glue. Our shower gets mildew or soap scum sometimes (but I do love me some bleach spray, and I use it liberally). My husband is middling-to-terrible about remembering to take the garbage out. Etc. I'll clean it up for guests, but like I said, if you look closely...definitely not spotless.

So OCD doesn't mean I live in a Stepford Home. Not to mention, believe it or not, there are Things I WILL Do. I will manually coax a hard poop from a constipated baby's butt. I mean fuck, I will coax a poop from a constipated dog!! We used to have a Greyhound who would get terribly constipated, and she would strain and strain, and I learned a trick: You everso delicately insert a matchstick, sulfur-end first, into their bum-bum (juuuust barely). And they will shit within seconds. I kid you not. Google it. But I did this, all for the love of the dog. I will do many things. I will clean toilets without complaint. I will let a cow lick my hand with its horrible, wonderful, slobbery slimy rough scratchy flabby tongue. I will kiss my dog on her head. I will kiss my baby's completely drool-covered mouth. I will let my cousin's tiny chihuahua lick Maya's cheek. I will chase down frogs in our yard and hold them. I even owned one as a pet ten years back, and I loved him so hard.

The frog I owned and held regularly: 

The frog I chased down just yesterday evening (after discovering him on our hot tub) and held:

I will even clean up three and a half, six, or fifteen feet (yes fifteen feet, it truly happened) of cat puke when necessary, and laugh about it, because if I hadn't laughed, I would have cried. 

Alas, I do not have photographic evidence of the fifteen feet of puke, but here is the three and a half. And I cleaned it up whilst wearing a very fancy red party dress after a Christmas party:

So, there ARE things I WILL DO. It's just that I, OMFG, wash my hands afterward. Imagine the hell out of that. (Well, truth be told I washed my hands four times after catching the wild frog yesterday, and applied hand sani twice. Bygones.) But see, I don't live I a complete bubble, and neither do my kids.

And our house is nowhere near pristine. It's kind of like, in my brain, it's not our germs I mind. I mean, we still always wash when appropriate when we're home, and let me assure you, the countertops (though cluttered) are Cloroxed whiter than Donnie & Marie's veneers, and everything you touch is as clean as a clean whistle what has been bleached, but it's like, as long as the germs of the world are sent to their foamy soapy grave down the drain the very second we enter our house, then I kind of let go a little, and hey, our germs are our germs and how can I get rid of every last one?

I some ways my OCD has gotten far, far worse, and the things I do to avoid germs/clean germs are much more extreme than they were, say ten years ago. But if you remember, ten years ago, I would Fantastik every inch of my apartment every single day, even though it was only I who lived there. So I don't know, I guess I'm more lax on vacuuming and scrubbing out every crevice of my own home, but much, much more freaky about other people's germs.

Still, even at home, I do find myself very anxious when it comes to so many things ("Did you wash after you changed her diaper? Maya, did you wash after you used your potty chair? Hey, I saw you wipe your nose with your hand so go wash. Did Naomi's binky fall down? Go wash it! Did you use hand sani? Maya! Sneeze into your ELBOW!" etc.). I am still constantly on yellow alert while at home, especially regarding what others are doing, but it's a different kind of anxiety than being out somewhere like a restaurant or the grocery store or certain people's houses. After taking as many measures as are practical, I can kind of be OK with our own germs.

That's the idea behind washing when we get home--erase the sins of the world and start fresh. For example, who cares if Naomi spits up all the hell over me? I can live with baby puke about my person.

(And so, clearly, can my poor sweet husband:)

Or who cares if I lay her right on the carpet, nakeypie, and she piddles on it?

(Here I am in the process of mopping and Anti-Icky-Poo-ing it up, and Naomi is in the process of inviting you to the Gun Show:)

Our germs. OURS.

It's not like I'm a Howard Hughes though. It's not like in public I'm a germ FREAK and then at home I collect bottles of my own piss or something.

For reference:

"Hughes insisted on using tissues to pick up objects, so that he could insulate himself from germs. He would also notice dust, stains or other imperfections on people's clothes and demand that they take care of it." Yet...

"In December 1947, Hughes told his aides that he wanted to screen some movies at a film studio near his home. Hughes stayed in the studio's darkened screening room for more than four months, never leaving. He subsisted exclusively on chocolate bars and milk, and relieved himself in the empty bottles and containers. He was surrounded by dozens of Kleenex boxes, which he continuously stacked and re-arranged. He wrote detailed memos to his aides on yellow legal pads giving them explicit instructions not to look at him, to respond when spoken to, but otherwise not speak to him. Throughout this period, Hughes sat fixated in his chair, often naked, continuously watching movies, reel after reel, day after day. When he finally emerged in the spring of 1948, his hygiene was terrible, as he had not bathed or cut his hair and nails for weeks." [Later,] "Hughes only had his hair cut and nails trimmed once a year."

In other words, just because I am a germaphobe in public and much less so one at home (or, I should say, just as much of a germaphobe but notably less anxious), I don't think there's any danger of me ending up sitting naked in my bedroom with a pink hotel napkin placed over my genitals, watching movies for a year straight.

Or maybe I will. Maybe the next logical step with my disorder is where I jump from alcoholing-down my forearms after visiting a restaurant, to sitting nude in my attic, surviving on Lik-M-Aid and scotch, and collecting my spit in vials and urinating into empty wine bottles.

---

Anyway, So yeah. OCD is funny like that. You think that a germaphobe is a germaphobe in every aspect of her life, but it's not true. God how I wish for a sparse, gorgeous, immaculate home. I want people to walk in and remark with awe, "Oooh, it's a sparkly!"

And I'm never OK with the dust or the clutter, and it honestly has driven me to panic before where I am sobbing in my husband's arms, feeling so incredibly overwhelmed, but it doesn't rule my life. It doesn't invade my every thought. I don't (usually) obsess about things like dusty wedding pictures (or if I do, recall that I'm a lazy fuck), but if you come to my house and don't wash your damn dirty hands, and then you so much as touch my TV remote, I will play nice but then I will be spraying that fucker down with 25 seconds' worth of Lysol the moment you leave.

I Can Laugh About It Now...Right?

.....Right??

So my older daughter Maya had been struggling with a wee bit o' the old constipatoriality. OK she'd been blocked up. Her poops were getting less and less frequent, harder and harder, and more and more compacted (hey, you're at a blog called Poop on a Hot Tin Slide, you have to expect to read about poop sometimes). So when she'd finally go, they hurt her poor bum-bum so badly she'd cry. Then she'd be afraid to poop again next time, and she'd hold it in, and behold: the vicious cycle.

So after taking her to a doctor who checked out her bum-bum and related regions, I began using the age-appropriate amount of Milk of Magnesia for her, at least just to get things started, because let me tell you, when I was blocked up after giving birth to Naomi, Milk of Magnesia was my savior. I had not pooped in almost a week and a half, so I've never been so thrilled for my ass to act a sprinkler. Bum-bum pee. The squirts. The trots. Captain Trips. Oh I was in heaven. It was beautiful. Thank you, Patron Saint of Compacted Stool.

(I should mention here: The ADULT dose of Milk of Magnesia is 2-4 TBSP (tablespoons). I started with the minimum dose, a mere 2 TBSP, and very soon after had epic, epic shits, as heretofore mentioned. I don't even want to think of what additional TBSPs would do to a person. Wait. I might have an idea. Which brings us to the climax of this tale...)

OK, so the dose for her age is 2-3 tsp (TEAspoons). tsp. Not TBSP.

For a week, I'd been giving her two tsp a day, to no avail. Still horrible, painful poops. So I finally upped her dose to three tsp. Still no real results.

I was always the one who gave her the meds. Then one fine morning, my husband took the initiative and gave Maya her daily morning dose of Milk of Magnesia. I had set the teaspoon that I use, right beside the bottle of medicine. However...well, I think you can smell where this is going.

Suddenly, at about 7 pm that night Maya started having out-of-this-world diarrhea. She has been fully potty-trained for a year and a half, but when we started giving her Milk of Magnesia, we had proactively put her in pull-ups, just in case, because I had no idea what even two teaspoons would do to her (since the MINIMUM adult dose, two TBSPs, made me crap out my soul).

So that night, suddenly she's shitting all over the place. All over. Every five minutes she's shitting her pull-up, after we've just gotten done cleaning up huge messes, and then it's another round of poo.

Finally, after the billionth epic diarrhea, my husband sheepishly asked me if the amount of medicine I usually give her is, and here I quote, "the third line on the medicine cup." (The dosage cap that comes on the bottle of Milk of Magnesia.) My jaw dropped.

The third line on the medicine cup is three TBSP. THREE TABLESPOONS. One entire tablespoon more than I took, as an adult who hadn't crapped in 10 days.

Let me put this in perspective. Thanks to Home Ec, I know that 3 tsp = 1 TBSP. So he effectively gave her NINE TEASPOONS, when the recommended dose for her age is 2-3 teaspooons. He gave her three tablespoons, when a mere two tablespoons liquefied MY innards.

I did not murder my husband that night, but legally, I'm pretty sure I had every right to.

So that was a rough patch. Not only dealing with epic diarrhea everywhere and the germs that entailed (giving her shower after shower, trying to deal with a pull-up that's about to spill its contents, just everything about it)....but finally the ass-pee seemed to end, and poor, exhausted, terrified Maya eventually went to bed.

-----

CUT TO THE FOLLOWING EVENING, 

20 GOT-DAMNED HOURS LATER.

The next night, the squirts had long since stopped, so I thought we were well into the clear. No more Milk of Magnesia had been given (obvi). Suddenly, as bedtime drew near, all at once I heard bloodcurdling screams coming from Maya's bedroom. I ran in and beheld the sight of a massacre. An ass massacre. An assacre.

There was diarrhea all over Maya's underpants. There was diarrhea all over Maya's legs. There was diarrhea all over Maya's feet. There was diarrhea all over the carpet underneath and around her. And somehow, SOMEHOW, there was diarrhea all over on her Drawing Weasel.*

*The Drawing Weasel is what Maya calls her four-foot-tall painting/drawing/art easel, the kind that stands up like a tripod. Quadpod. Whatever.

I had every right to go ballistic on my husband, but all I could manage was to go stone cold, break into brain sweats, swallow my vomit, say a quick prayer to the Patron Saint of Bum-Bum Germs, and extraordinarily loudly announce to that man that he himself would be cleaning up every square centimeter of this crime scene, that he would be solely responsible for its total and complete disinfection, that he would be washing the child, and that divorce papers would be served in the morning.

I was just in total shock. I mean, if the thought of bum-bum germs on the handle of a shopping cart make me seriously (seriously) panic, and if the fecal microbes on the tabletops at restaurants give me tremendous anxiety, what was I to do with diarrhea all over the carpet? With Actual Shit on the carpet?? The CARPET for sweet baby Jesus' sake! The light. light. light. beige. carpet. Diarrhea. Carpet. I considered killing it with fire, or running away and never coming back.

After my husband was done man-cleaning "cleaning," I went in there and re-cleaned. OCD-stylee. I'm p. sure I emptied an entire can of Lysol Garden Mist-Scented Spray. I sprayed it all over the Drawing Weasel. Then I sprayed it all over the Drawing Weasel again. Then, then, I SOAKED the carpet with it. I sprayed and sprayed, in small circles, over the area of doom, for tens of minutes, until the carpet was positively drenched with Lysol. Then I coughed, tried to swat away the oppressive fumes, and sat back in defeat, because what more could I do?

My worst nightmare. Bum-bum germs. Sprayed out my child like a tommy-gun, all over her bedroom. Every time she plays at her Drawing Weasel, I have to restrain the urge to say, "Let's go wash your feet, love."

On that note, I'd like to end with a soliloquy from Maya that she gave the following day. I sat there, typing furiously, transcribing her oration word for word:

"Diarrhea is not funny. It is kind of bad poopies. It's liquid last time. Three tablespoons of diarrhea and one cup of Milk of Magnesia. Daddy gave me a little too much last time. Diarrhea is the thing that makes your bum bum hurt and makes your tummy really hurt. And it's liquid and it has water and poopy is just like water and water is just like--usually I wipe my own bum bum. Diarrhea is kind of not liquid and kind of yes liquid. And sometimes--I didn't toot. And if you drink not too much juice, not too much cocoa, and no bum bum medicine water, just drink water bottles, and not much water bottle parts, but usually you watch a show and you have to go pee pee and poo poo and sometimes Cheerios helps but not very much Cheerios and not very much fiber cereal, and I don't like milk, but I like water with no medicine in it, and usually I watch a show and then I feel like I have to go poopy. We can't eat very much peanut butter, right? Neosporin doesn't usually help your bum bum but you can use it for that. So we went to the doctor every minute ago, and the doctor fixed me, and it's liquid, kinda liquid, and sometimes it's diarrhea, and diarrhea does come out your bum bum. DIARRHEA!! The doctor put the stethoscope on my tummy to make sure how much my poopy doesn't come out. And she checked on my bum bum but it doesn't hurt, so she got gloves on her hands so she doesn't get bum bum germs on her hands. If there's germs on your hands from a bum bum, you better wear gloves and wash. And then throw them in the garbage. Then you eat fiber cereal. Fiber cereal comes out of your bum bum in a line, them a lump, then a line. And that's all about diarrhea. Can't talk about it."