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 What an outdated, totally gross tradition.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.

In the Words of One Jack Black...

I did it. I've done it. I fuckin' did it.

I SAW CONTAGION.


I handled it well, I think. It was pretty much as I expected. Lots of handshakes. Lots of touching doorknobs. Lots of sweaty upper lips and flushed cheeks. Lots of hand sani placed strategically. Lots of smiling, toothy, slurred Gwyneth Paltrow lines. WHAT'S IN THE BOX? WHAT'S IN THE BOOOOOOX???

Oh, but Jude Law's janky fake front tooth? Completely unnecessary.

I remember thinking I should have taken my notebook and pen, movie-critic style, but instead I just wrote notes all over my hand throughout the movie, things I'd noticed, things I was going to blog about, things that were going to BLOW YOUR MIND.

However, by the time I got home, I'd washed my hands so many times, I now can't read my notes.

Well shit. But I swear, it was some great stuff. Genius. Award-winning.

I do, however, remember one part with great glee. A character was talking to a disease expert (portrayed by Kate Winslet), describing his wife's reaction to the outbreak, saying, "She makes me strip down and take off all my clothes in the garage before entering the house, then she slathers me with Purell. Isn't this over the top?" 

Kate Winslet answers with a simple, "...No." 

I silently laughed my proverbial bum-bum off. Because that is soooo me & my husband. And I felt vindicated. Actually, this whole movie made me feel vindicated. Everything made me want to scream, "SEE?! See? You can fuckin DIE if you touch an airplane drinking glass! Your face will rot off it you touch poker chips at a casino! YOU WILL KILL THE WORLD IF YOU DO NOT WASH AFTER TOUCHING YOUR BLACKBERRY!!!1112@#!"

I also found it humorous how in one scene, Kate Winslet had obviously pulled the duvet cover off her hotel bed.  Way to go, Kate! That's using your noodle.

Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday!

Cold and flu viruses can survive for between 3-7 days on surfaces such as telephones, keyboards, computer mice, desktops, photocopiers, the water cooler, printers and other high-touch surfaces. Germs transmitted from a sneeze or cough can travel up to 3 feet where they will land on such surfaces. When someone sneezes, the mist of liquid droplets from their nose will be suspended in the air for a long time. You can walk into a room where someone sneezed five minutes ago, and you'll be breathing in those particles. And any germs attached to them.

The average person in an office touches about 300 surfaces every 30 minutes. In the world of viruses, even kissing is safer than shaking hands.

Origins, III.

For the most part, I am comfortable with my OCD. Like I've said, it makes life ridiculously difficult sometimes, and living with a constant level of extreme anxiety isn't my favorite thing. But the reason I am mostly comfortable with it is that I believe I'm right. I believe there are germs on things, and I believe they can make you sick, and that is all I need to know. So I like to wash those germs off. End of story, right?

And anyway, what's so hard about washing your damn hands? Give it a try. You might like it. It tickles!

The cold/flu phobia, I am far less comfortable living with. I feel like surface germs, germs that get on your hands, are, for the most part, something I can attempt to control. If I want clean hands, I wash them. If I want clean carpets, no shoes in the house. If Maya drops a cookie at the park, we throw it away (no three-second rule in this house, you mud duck!). If Maya plays at the park, we employ heavy amounts of hand sanitizer. Simple! (Well, simple except inside my brain, wherein it is screaming panic-ridden obscenities. If my brain could sweat, it would be at all times in a cold one.) But I can't control the fact that we breathe other people's air. And to be constantly afraid of breathing in cold germs or that flu effluvia is going to enter my eyeballs (see previous entry), this is too much anxiety, even for this OCDer. I have no control over breathing in germs. I can still wash my hands, but I still have to breathe, now don't I. NOW DON'T I? I ask you. I can't walk around holding my breath and looking down forever, can I. NOW CAN I? I demand an answer.

So except for this "being deathly afraid of colds" part, basically I am actually OK with being OCD, because I don't think I'm wrong. There are other types of OCD that don't make sense to me personally, like incessant counting, not stepping on cracks, rituals, needing to do things a certain number of times, etc. They don't make sense to me because they are not based on things that can really happen. If you step on a crack, your mother will not die. There is no reason to count every step you take, every blonde you pass, every chew of your food. If you don't lock and unlock your door 37 times in a row exactly, nothing bad will happen. But if you use a payphone, you get all kinds of shit on your hands. If you touch the ketchup bottle at a restaurant, you get all kinds of shit on your hands. If you touch the pen used to sign your name on your receipt, you get all kinds of shit on your hands. And some of that shit can make you sick like the dog. And I don't want that shit on my hands, and I don't want it in my house, and I don't want it on my babies. So I wash. Fine.

But lately I find myself with new little tics, new little compulsions, and it freaks my shit right out. Because isn't germ OCD and flu phobia enough?

See, there's one more Thing I Do. It's in the realm of the "things that don't make sense" that I listed above. Like how there's no reason to check 40 got-damn times that your stove is off, when you KNOW IT IS. But I am beginning to do things like that. Well, one thing in particular. But once again, there is an Origin.

ORIGIN #3: CHECKING THAT THE BACK SLIDING-GLASS DOOR 

IS LOCKED...OVER AND OVER AND OVER.

Years ago, I heard a horrifying story about a young girl who was taken from her bed, kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered. Her name was Jessica Lunsford. (Warning, graphic details.) Her abductor and murderer entered through an unlocked door in the middle of the night. I also heard a similar story about a younger child, I think she was around age three, also abducted in the middle of the night, and her abductor, too, entered through an unlocked back sliding glass door. Again, kidnapped, raped, killed. I have never been able to get these stories out of my mind. They haunt me.

So I always make sure that our back sliding glass door is locked. You feel me dawg?

Except that sometimes I forgot, and my husband never checks, and sometimes my mom would leave it unlocked while babysitting, etc. And every time I'd find it unlocked the next morning, a vise inside me would squeeze tighter and tighter, and my brain would break out into that cold sweat, and the panic and the obsession grew. I knew I was the only one who would check the goddamn back door to make sure it was locked. So I checked. And I checked. And the obsession started to take over.

Right now, as it stands, come nighttime, I will tug on the back door to make sure it is locked. It is. I will check email one last time, get a drink of water from the kitchen, and pass the back door on my way to the bedroom. Then I will stop, go back, and check the door again. But you only checked it two minutes ago, I tell myself. Jo, you KNOW it is locked. Sometimes on my way to bed, I try to continue to walk to my bedroom. But it's like you're in a dream where your legs won't move or you're stuck in concrete. You can't lift them. I cannot continue to my bedroom. I must check it again. I MUST. I go back and I give the door a tug. Locked. Of course it was locked. I had already checked. And the thing is, I had also already checked it five time previously, within the last couple of hours, even before I was ready to go to bed. Sometimes I check it every time I pass it, which is approximately exactly 9347543985 times a day.

So now, my compulsions are starting to edge into what I consider The Unreasonable. The Irrational. (Even though I know that 99.9% of my readers already fully believe that ALL my tics and compulsions and behaviors are totally unreasonable and irrational: to you, they are absurd at least, harmful and dangerous at most.) But I would agree, this thing is getting a little out of control. The door thing, it freaks me out. One check should be enough.

I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.

I check it again anyway.

But you see, there was an Origin. Jessica Lunsford. And the other tiny little girl whose name I wish I could remember. One unlocked back door, one time, one night, that particular night, that is all it took to lead to unspeakable tragedy. And now, having daughters of my own, one the same age as the younger child who was murdered, the fear never leaves my mind.

So now my very rational* germ phobia has a new pal: irrational checking.

*(Rational in my own, and yeah, I know, ONLY my own, opinion.)

I will continue to check. Because I can't not. This is what OCD is. But again, I just wanted to explain to you how some of these things come to be. So you can understand that not all bizarre compulsive behavior is just because someone is crazy-go-nuts. Sometimes we have reasons. This is another of my reasons. And you can't just tell someone like me, "Stop it." Because I can't.

Next up: MORE FUNNY SHIT BECAUSE THIS IS GETTING BORING AND DEPRESSING.

Things I Do.

Lest you think this blog is all fun, games, jokes, and bum-bums, let me assure you, it is not. In the famous words of one Mr. Billy Crystal:

It's not funny being a mom with OCD. It's not fun being a mom with OCD. It really, really sucks.

I just wanted to give you a quick rundown of the Things I Do. A non-exhaustive list. These are my obsessions. These are my compulsions. This is my disorder.

• I wash all my fruits and vegetables. Oh really? you say, nonplussed. Doesn't everybody? Well first of all, let me tell you that no, not everybody does. *shudder* When I met my husband, he did not wash his produce. He ate store-bought grapes straight from the bag, without so much as a splash of water. Let it be known, I put an end to that with a right quickness. But back to my point: I wash all fruits and vegetables......WITH SOAP. Now, some of you may have done this once or twice with a certain fruit, like cantaloupes. A few years back, there was a big e.coli outbreak, traced back to cantaloupes. Why? Because cantaloupes sit around in shit manure-enriched dirt all day long. News stations started recommending washing your melons with soap (that's what she said?). And suddenly, people started thinking, "Hey, maybe I too should wash my fucking cantaloupe before slicing e.coli straight through its delicious orange flesh!" Even wikipedia agrees with me:

"Because the surface of a cantaloupe can contain harmful bacteria—in particular, Salmonella—it is always a good idea to wash a melon thoroughly before cutting and consumption."

God bless you, wikipedia. But I digest. So anyway, some of you might wash a honeydew or two with soap, but let me assure you, I wash all my produce with soap. A tiny dab of dishsoap. That includes apples (naturally--I mean, just think how many hands have picked them over, looking for that perfect Braeburn; fingers that have picked asses, hands that have flushed toilets, hands that have been sneezed all over, hands that have been on the naughty bits, fingers that have been up noses...). I also wash, with soap, oranges (if you cut them or gouge your fingers into them to peel them, IN go the germs), tomatoes, cucumbers, grapes, avocados (again--slicing the salmonella straight through), everything. Even...bananas. Because, who wants to touch a dirty banana (that's what she said?) that has been handled by hundreds of people from one country to the next? I just don't want to handle a dirty banana and then go wipe drool from my precious newborn's mouth, is all. I want clean bananas. So sue me.

People always chastise me, "But then your fruit will taste like soap!" Umm, ever heard of this thing called rinsing? If you wash your plates and forks and spoons with dishsoap, does all your food taste like soap? No. Because you, umm, rinsed them?

So yes. That is Thing 1 that I do. Here is Thing 2.

• I wash my hands the very second I enter my home (after, naturally, taking off my shoes). The whole family does. The first thing we do, no matter how full the bladder, no matter how hungry the husband, no matter how urgently something else needs to be done, is wash our hands. For a fresh start. To keep the germs of the world out of my sanctuary, my home. And upon arriving home, after washing, we also use hand sanitizer. Yes, we wash and THEN we use hand sanitizer too. If my husband is taking care of washing Maya's hands in the guest bathroom and I am washing up in the kitchen, you will often hear me anxiously scream out, "DID YOU USE HAND SANI AFTER??" And the answer is always yes. Because my husband has been well-trained is no fool. But still, I ask, because I can't not. One could even say I ask...compulsively. HUH!
  
  
• If I pass somebody who has the nerve to cough, or, God in heaven forbid, sneeze, as I pass by, I instantly hold my breath and lower my head and look down. I hold my breath (mid-breath, at whatever stage of breathing I was in) in order to not inhale their ferocious and surely deadly maladies, and I look downward so that minuscule droplets and effluvia do not enter my eyeballs. That's right. Because eyes are a mucous membrane, and you are more likely to catch a cold if you touch your eyes (with cold-germy hands) than your mouth. And in my mind, I can see those cough germs propelled at me, and I die a little inside, say a few prayers, hold my breath, look down, and hurry past as fast as I can. 

OK, last point for now, because there are so many Things I Do that they will require a separate entry. And trust me. Some of them get goooood (and by good I mean crazaaaay). And some of the Things I Do are so good that I will in fact never, not ever share them with you, because that are JUST THAT loony toons. They are THAT crazy. Well, the tricky thing is, they are crazy to you. Not to me. To me, just embarrassing. And to me, they are right and good and important. To me, they are absolutely necessary. To me, they protect my family's health and save my sanity. But some Things I Do are even too outlandish to share. Maybe someday... 

Anyway, one last Thing I Do:

• I will not let my children play at the McPlayPlace. Will not. More accurately, cannot. I wish I could, because PlayPlaces are fun Places to Play. And Maya wants to go. I wish I could take her. But I am held hostage by my phobias. To me, the McDonalds PlayPlace is a hotbed of germs. Why do I feel that way? Because it is. And you've got to admit that. But see, even though that place is positively crawling with every disease and virus known to mankind, most moms can still let their kids play there. Because kids like to play, and moms like milkshakes. And most moms don't think, "If I let my child so much as crawl through one McTunnel, she will come down with swine flu." Well I do. And I cannot help it, and I cannot stop it. There was one time--ONE TIME--a couple of years ago that I took Maya to the PlayPlace. I don't know how I managed, but I did. (I had woken up on the softer side of OCD that day.) And every so often while she played, I had her come over and use hand sanitizer, then keep playing. There may or may not have been a few dozen shrieks of "Maya! HANDS OUT! DON'T TOUCH YOUR MOUTH!!" throughout the very tense morning. When she was all done, I wiped her hands with sanitizing wipes, then used hand sanitizing gel, then went home and washed thoroughly, THEN used hand sani again. I know, you're thinking, "This bish gonna give her kid skraight-up alcohol poisoning." Or else by now you are just dying, DYING inside to start spouting off "facts" about the Hygiene Hypothesis. SEE ENTRY #1, MOTHERFUCKER.

But my point is, I let her. One time. And guess what happened? She. Got. Sick. She caught a cold. The dreaded cold.* Coincidence? Correlation, causation, whatnot, whathaveyou? All I know is that the one time I took my gee-dee kid to McPlay around a little, she got sick. And honest to God, this is a kid that just doesn't get sick. She's had like two colds in her life. Thus, coincidence, I think not. So never again. You can just forget that particular indoor germ incubator.  The McDonalds PlayPlace can kiss my bum-bum.

You can also forget bouncy houses, Chuck E. Cheese's, Funtasia, coffee shop play areas, mall play areas (*herk*), and the play area at doctors' offices (the absolute worst of the worst). Taking my daughter to outdoor parks is hard (and rare) enough, but on a broiling hot day when the sun's intense rays are there to act as God's Disinfectant, if you catch me in a rare moment of lowered anxiety, I might take my kid to slide a little at the joint down the street (but these days I am vigilant about checking for fossilized poop on said slide). So we play a little, I hyperventilate a little, I scream out a little too often "Maya HANDS OUT!!!", and we head home. Followed by a bleach bath and a quick dousing in flames. I kid.

*This dread, this extreme and absolute fear of colds and flus, that is a story for another day. Sit tight and try to be patient, child.

I wish I could take my child places. I do. I joke, but seriously: the panic. The anxiety. You cannot imagine the fear. So, stuck in the house day after day, I suffer. And worse, my kids suffer. 

And this is the part that's not funny, that's not fun.

:(