Wife Swap: Jo Edition.

(Or is that Wifes Wap?)

I've always wondered what it would be like if I went on Wife Swap. Scratch that, I KNOW what it would be like. You know how they always pair totally opposite women/families? A rich bitch goes to live in a hovel, and the other wife lives in a mansion; an unschooler goes to live in a house where the children have every single minute of their day scheduled, planned, and busy; a mother who lives to serve her husband goes to live in a house where the wife doesn't lift a finger; etc.

 

Yeah. So here's what that would mean for me.

They'd give my household a wife who:

• OMG wears shoes in my pristine house
• Does not wash her hands or the kids' hands upon first coming home
• Takes my children to the McDonald's McPlaguePlace
• Uses the bathroom without washing
• Changes Naomi's diapers without washing
• Brings the shared bum-bum sponge back into fashion
• Gives Maya all the soda pop--scratch that, all  the Red Bull--she wants
• Lets the kids watch horror movies
• Fills the baby's bed with a plush baby bumper, five pillows, eighteen stuffed animals, and four blankets
• Lets Maya play in the street or totally out of sight at the park
• Teaches Maya to flick her boogers

• Cuts the mold off cheese and keeps using it
• Leaves bean soup out overnight and serves it the next day
• Lounges around bare-ass nekked with her bum-bum right on my couch
• Brings in three cats and a dog who scootches

• Sneezes and coughs with wild abandon
• Lets the baby chew on the restaurant table
• Lets the baby play with and gnaw on her cell phone and keys
• Lets our new scootching dog lick the baby's face and mouth
• Shares a bath with my kids
• Goes lake swimming and doesn't shower after
• Lets Maya mix up her Play-Doh colors (HORROR!)
• Mixes up a nice batch of raw meatloaf with her bare hands and then merely wipes them on a kitchen towel
• Throws away all my Clorox wipes and hand sani

• Lets my kids eat carrots freshly plucked out of the soil
• Makes mud-pies with the kids and looks away when Naomi actually takes a bite
• And likes her chicken pink in the middle.

Maybe they'd even bring in the lady from the infamous "High Meat" household. (Hilarious sidenote: My husband names his character "High Meat" when he plays MMORPGs.)

"It's got a wang to it."

"Do you believe that God would put anything on this earth to hurt us?"

Yeah, I don't know, how about motherfucking sharks?

...Or listeria, or E. Coli, or rabid bats, or salmonella, or lice, or yellowjackets, or jerkoffs in grade school who throw encyclopedias at your head, or crocodiles, or campylobacter, or bears, or or strep, or staph, or legionella, or leprosy, or cholera, or hungry lions, or Lady Gaga??

Just to name a few.

But I digress.

Anyway, I think the wife they paired my husband with would do all these things and more.



...Or else she'd just be really fun and outgoing and actually take the kids places and get her butt off the internet. You know, whatever.

On a Serious Note.

Well, I managed to survive Halloween, barely. I really did have several moments of absolute panic when I thought of my kid reaching in all those bowls of candy. Like, full-blown anxiety attacks. And now I think I'm going to have to either wash my hands every single time after touching any of the candy to open for my daughter, or else put the candy away for a couple of weeks until I think all the potential cold germs have died slow suffering deaths. That doesn't account for the bum-bum germs on the candy though. Do bum-bum germs ever die?

---

I'm still seeing my doctor to try to get this OCD under control. So far she's got me on a cocktail of medications so wild that it would blow your mind and destroy your pansy liver, but you see, my liver is made of steel. Things don't affect me like they affect the typical person: caffeine, alcohol, painkillers, all medication really. And that sucks.

Certain symptoms of mine are much more under control (I was seeing her for atypical depression as well, so long as we're airing my dirty laundry), but the OCD is completely untouched. I'm on 3982743279.5 drugs and my OCD is all, "IN YOUR FACE, SUCKER! You can't TOUCH me!!"

And I'm on some hardcore shit. I take all these pills and sometimes more each day:

If you look at this, doesn't this kind of look like a sideways infinity symbol? Fitting, no?

And do you think they're working for my OCD? In a word:

That is to say, 

So I don't know what to tell ya. I'm still seeing my doc on a regular basis, and we're still tweaking this and increasing that and adding this, but right now, OCD still has the upper hand, and I still constantly tell Maya "DON'T TOUCH!" and use hand sani up to my elbows 259 times a day and shroud my baby in Saran-wrap and so forth.

Honestly, I've lost faith. When motherfucking KLONOPIN didn't do jack squat for me, I lost faith. I truly believe nothing can calm down my OCD symptoms, mostly because, see, I still believe I'm right about the things I'm afraid of. I still believe know there ARE germs on things like restaurant tables and ketchup bottles and McPlaguePlaces and people's hands and doorknobs, etc. I will never be OK with my baby slobbering on a shopping cart handle or making out with a Saint Bernard.

There's no drug that will make me forget that there are germs on things, and I don't think there are any drugs that will make me be OK with me or my family ingesting or spreading about those germs or not washing them off at our earliest convenience.

When I was seeing a shrink about this, he said there was a little tiny blue area of the brain responsible for panic or fear or worry or concern that you could turn up or turn down. He said mine was obviously cranked way, way up. (Thank you Captain Obvious!! Now here's 300 American dollars for your diagnosis).

He said that medication could easily crank this "blue area" of my brain down. He prescribed meds. Then later my other doctor prescribed meds. Lots of meds. Lots and lots of meds. But it's just not working. I don't think anything can crank it down. I really don't. I think the little blue area of my brain will stay cranked up to red. Code Red. Forever.

I really do feel hopeless about it all.

To Live, or Not to Live. That Is OCD.

So my darling friend Darlena, as planned, made her rebuttal to my Hygiene Hypothesis post. The post below this one is the entry I settled on as my quasi-rebuttal-to-a-rebuttal, but in reality, this right here is the first post that her rebuttal inspired.

In her blog post, she makes excellent points. Mostly because it seems she basically agreed with me. Heh. I found myself thinking, "Well, she's not wrong about that...or that...or even that...Hey! I said that too!"

And then I bristled a little bit. I took a moment's offense at the statement "I simply cannot avoid all the germs she can. I have a life."

I took offense because, obviously, it seemed to be telling me I have no life or that I need to get one.  And I know Dar would never hurt my feelings on purpose, but at first, I must confess, I was stung.

But then I thought a little more. And you know what? I TOTALLY DON'T HAVE A LIFE. Or, more accurately, my poor babies don't. (Well, OK, one of my babies, Naomi, is too young, at five months old, to have a life or to know about cold germs and bum-bum germs--although whenever she sneezes, we jokingly say, "Noey, Christsakes, cover your sneeze!!")

But yes, that's the whole point, of this disorder, of this blog: I don't have a life. You're right, Dar.

The whole problem with my OCD is that, indeed, my life and my husband's life and my children's life are drastically impacted. I am consumed with panic and fears about germs, and that means that either (1) I just don't GO anywhere; or (2) I freak out internally whenever we DO go somewhere, which is no fun. No fun at all, I assure you. I don't have a life, because getting out there to live it scares me.

I am a stay-at-home mom. Aside from things like taking time out for the kids' naps or allowing time for my all-important surfing of the web, my job is to raise and grow and inspire and stimulate my children by taking them places in this world. Instead, we stay home. When I say I'm a stay-at-home mom, I got-damn mean it.

So do I have a life? No, not really. Occasionally, when I wake up on the right side of OCD, I do take my kids out--to the park, on an errand to Babies R Us, to the neighbor's house, even, like whoa, into the backyard. I know, right??

Sidenote: What's sad about that is that it's not a joke--it takes extreme effort and motivation to just plain take my kids into our own yard. It's less about germs than it is about motivation--I think that's a whole separate issue. Often, I tell Maya, "You can go play outside in our [fully-fenced] yard by yourself. Mama can't go outside right now. But you can, and I will watch you through the window." Needless to say, this isn't a very ideal suggestion for her, since she wants to play, and play with ME. But one of the endless issues that I deal with is either a type of depression, agoraphobia...

...or I'm just plain and simply a fat fuck what won't get off the couch,

or else I'm just a lazy ass,

but all I know is I suck for a plethora of reasons. A cornucopia, if you will.

Anyway. So those were my two first reactions to Dar's "rebuttal" to my Hygiene Hypothesis post: Agreement, yet at the same time, a little pain.

But she is right. She has a life, and can't spend all that time worrying, like I do. Or, more accurately, she just doesn't spend all that time worrying, because she doesn't have a mental disorder. See, she's lacking one crucial thing:

She's not

.

I joke. I joke so I don't cry. Tears of a clown, and all that shit.

No. Not that clown.

No. Not that clown either. Jeez, you guys.

(Can I interrupt this regularly scheduled program to tell you all that I HAVE MET TIM CURRY IN PERSON? OK then. Back to bum-bum germs.)

----

So, while Dar may basically agree with me on a lot of points, the thing is, it doesn't occur to her in the same way it does to me. She might go to a friend's house and not notice if the friend washed her hands before starting dinner. She might let her kids play at the McPlaguePlace and keep popping over for more bites of fries before heading back into the tunnels, without using hand sanitizer three times in a row first. She might go for a walk and let her kids pet the neighbor dog, then go home and just keep playing without needing to wash first. She might, sin of all sins, wear shoes in the house. ;)

Because while she knows good hygiene, and agrees that handwashing is very important, things don't occur to her like they do to me. I can't even say things ever even do "occur" to me, since the thoughts never left in the first place.

A couple of her quotes stood out to me:

"Yes, washing your hands is good. Yes, it's clean and I advocate it strongly for everyone. But to the point of compulsion? If I see a compulsive tendency popping up in my kid, taking care of that (provided they don't have a mental block that predisposes them to compulsions in general) trumps hand washing."

The only "good" thing I can say about my OCD is that I don't compulsively wash (or make my kids wash) in the way people imagine most OCDers do. I don't wash 12 times in a row. Once is fine. I don't jump up off the couch with the sudden and random compulsion to wash. I wash at what I think are very appropriate times. So I'm not one of those people who washes compulsively, except...I don't know what else you'd call it. I guess you could say that I DO have a compulsion to wash. Just not until my hands bleed, or in the middle of the night, etc. So thank goodness for that, anyway.

Then Dar said:

"They really haven't lived in a bubble, and that's okay. I'd rather them be sick sometimes if it allows them to live a little."

That's also where she and I differ. I'd prefer ANY option over my kids getting sick. This is the obsession, the constant worry, the all-consuming fear I can't get over. And  another of her quotes really got to me deeply:

"Mental health is as important as physical health."

She hit the nail on the head with that last sentence. That's where I struggle to find balance. Because I believe strongly that there are bajillions of horrible germs on the toys at the Children's Museum, I can't let my daughter play there without having an extreme panic attack. And I'm not giving my daughter a chance to play, explore, learn. So I don't know what to do--how to balance it all? Go to the Museum anyway, at the expense of MY mental health, just to make my kids happy? Or keep them home, where I feel safe and clean, at the expense of the richness of their lives?

Obviously, the answer is, I need to find a way to NOT feel terrified and horrified by taking my kids to the Museum. Win-win. Kids play, I feel fine. But it's the "I feel fine" part I'm working on, and trying to find a fix for.

Because months later, many visits to the doctor later, and all MANNER of medicinal nonsense later, I'm still where I started. Living in a bubble and keeping my kids chained in there too.

P. Much.

I swore I'd never discuss this with you, and that if you tried to blather on to me about it, I would kick you in the slats. But a good friend's blog post got me thinking, and when you get me thinking, you get me ranting, and I cannot be stopped. So here we are: Discussing The Hygiene Hypothesis.

The link I am responding to from is my buddy Darlena's blog, ParenTwin, which you can find here. She's planning a "rebuttal" of sorts, so I will be sure to link you to that later. :)

---

Recently, Darlena was posting about the dreaded First Time at the Cesspool Preschool. Her poor kiddos got sick p. much immediately.

Now, this is not uncommon. Everyone talks about how as soon as your kids start daycare, they're going to be sick p. much constantly. If they start preschool and have never been in daycare, they're also going to be sick p. much constantly. What is their reasoning? "Because they've never been exposed to these germs before."

In Darlena's case, though, her kids have been exposed to tons of stuff, stuff any typical kid has been exposed to: germs that would make my skin crawl and my OCD spiral out of control, because I am not the typical mom and my kids aren't allowed to be the typical kids. Darlena is an extremely active mother, and her kids get a lot of exposure to the world at large--she runs a billion errands a day and takes her kids along, she takes them for walks, they're at the park p. much all the time, and they have had more playdates in their little finger than my kids have had in their entire life.*

*Pretend this metaphor made sense. Move along.

So, her kids have been exposed, like most kids. Maybe not to daycare, but to shopping cart handles, public restrooms, diaper "incidents," potty chair "incidents," playdates with other little kids, and surely poop on a hot tin slide or two. Her kids do not live in a bubble. If anyone's do, MINE do.

And yet, her kids got sick immediately after starting school, as is typical. Why? Surely they've been exposed to plenty of germs and colds before. Why isn't the Hygiene Hypothesis working here?

Because it's p. much bunk.

Oh, and please recall:

"A theory has been extensively tested and is generally accepted, while a hypothesis is a speculative guess that has yet to be tested."

Sorry, hypothesis!!

Listen, I totally agree that there are certain things kids need to be exposed to. Dirt, grass, plants, well, all of nature. Dust. Animals, along with their animal dander. Things like this. But there are certain things that never, ever benefit anyone. The stomach flu. E. coli. Salmonella. Staph. MRSA.

Even things like the good old common cold or the flu. (1) How, exactly, do these bolster one's immune system; and (2) why, according to so many people, must small children be exposed to such yucky things?

Let's examine (1). Say your toddler catches a cold. She is snotty and coughy and snivelly and miserable for a week. She can't sleep because her nose is all stuffy, and if she can't sleep, neither do you. Everyone is miserable when the kid is sick. Or, even worse, let's say your tiny baby catches a cold. She doesn't even know what's going on and has no tools to deal with being sick. She can't be told, "Here, blow your nose" or "This soup will make you feel better" or even, "Honey, I know how bad you feel, but you'll get well soon." She can't even take any medicine for it! All your baby knows is that she can't breathe.

So, has this cold helped either child? Colds mutate constantly. You never become immune to catching them. Because the next one is going to be one you have never encountered before.

And if catching colds helps us avoid catching colds (a ridiculous statement in itself), then why don't we ever "grow out of it"? If we attend daycare as kids and are constantly coming down with something, and the go through school still getting sick here and there, why as adults do we still catch colds? Why as old people aren't we completely immune?

Again, because colds mutate. And catching one does not mean you will become magically stronger and not likely catch the next one. We will catch colds ALL OUR LIVES. For many people, 2-3 a year, or eve more, for their entire existence, p. much as a rule.

So. On to part (2). If we are forever going to be catching colds, why is it so important that kids are exposed so young? Everyone always spouts off about how great and wonderful it is that kids get sick. "They're strengthening their immune system! Hoorahhh!!" But if we're gonna catch colds, why not do you utmost to prevent them from happening to your little tiny ones? Why not try to wait until they are older and stronger, and mentally/physically better able to deal with them and understand that they're sick?

If you had your choice, would you want your 2-week-old baby to catch a cold? No way, right?

Well, why, then? Why wouldn't you want her to? Wouldn't it help her? Give her a nice headstart on the good old immune system? No. It would be fucking misery, and possibly dangerous to boot. Babies can choke on phlegm in the night or become so stuffed up that they die. Silently. It happens. Your non-OCD mind might not worry about a baby dying from a cold, but mine does, because I have OCD but also because it happens. A good friend of mine almost lost her daughter right there at the doctor's office, after taking her in for a regular ol' case of the sniffles. Her two-year-old suddenly turned blue and had to be taken in an ECNALUBMA to the next-door hospital and be resuscitated. Anecdata, yes, but true, and fucking scary.

So why is it so great for a 6-month-old to catch a cold? Or even a two-year-old? And why am I the crazy one for disinfecting my daughter's restaurant table, or keeping her away from sick family, or not wanting to take her to the McPlaguePlace McPlayPlace?

My older daughter, Maya, has only ever had like two colds in her life. One was when she was 7 weeks old, when my sister-in-law thoughtlessly brought her two very, very sick kids to a family get-together. We all caught that cold, and not only were we miserable, I was terrified for my infant. I basically kept vigil over her and never slept until she was better. So how did this cold benefit her? She could still catch another at any point.

But she only did one other time (funny enough, thanks to the same oh-so thoughtful sister-in-law). Just those couple of times, because we take great pains to wash and sanitize our hands, teach her not to touch her eyes, nose, or mouth when out of the house, and to maintain a clean home or clean environment, wherever we go.

According to the Hygiene Hypothesis, my kid should be sick all the time, because we put forth such effort to avoid contact with germs. My Purell Kid should catch every virus we run into because of an immune system that was never allowed to develop. But she's never sick.

Whereas certain friends of mine (theee very friends mentioned in my blog post, "The Acid Test") are sick All. The. Time. All the time. ALL THE TIME.

And they never wash their hands. Seriously, like, never ever. Not when coming home. Not before eating. Not before cooking. Not after shaking hands. Not after playing at the Children's Museum of Every Virus Known to Man. Not after pooping. Not after touching raw meat or turtles or the floor of a Wal*Mart. Never.

If you took my family, and their family, we'd p. much disprove the Hygiene Hypothesis right then and there. They are exposed to so many germs you'd think they'd have developed chainmail fucking ARMOR against colds and flu. You'd think germs would cower at the sight of them. You'd think our friends would see germs and be like, "Dude, we've HAD you before. We've rolled in you. We've eaten you. We've rubbed you in our eyes and noses. WE PWN YOU."

And yet it is my family who never gets sick. Why? Because we wash our damn dirty hands.

Now, back to Darlena. This is not to compare her to my "Acid Test" friends at all. Not remotely, because no one else could possibly be that bad. :)

But because Darlena doesn't suffer from OCD, her kids have been exposed to a typical, normal amount of germs. They've been healthy, they've been sick, and so it goes. Yet at their first exposure to preschool, they caught the sniffles.

My turn is coming up soon. My daughter enters preschool in mere days. Will she catch a cold right away?

MAYBE.

But am I glad that she has not had a dozen colds in her almost-four years?

YES.

Because they would have been of no help. We would have had a sick, miserable child on our hands, for no reason, because the next cold to come along would be a new, mutated one she had never been exposed to anyway, and she could catch it too, if we weren't careful with hygiene.

If we can agree that kids who have been exposed to a lot of germs, AND kids who have not been exposed to a lot of germs, BOTH get sick pretty frequently when beginning daycare or school (which seems to be the consensus, since whenever daycare or preschool is mentioned, the response is always, "Ohhh, prepare for constant runny noses and coughs"), then I ask you, what was the point of all the colds your kid had when they were much younger?

Being exposed to certain things does absolutely no good whatsoever. These are things like the stomach flu or all the nasties that live on commoly touched surfaces, like staph or shigella. Who ever heard of becoming immune to E. Coli or being unlikely to catch it next time you're exposed to it? Or having had food poisoning so many times that now you are untouchable? Not to mention, frequent handwashing and all-around good hygiene has drastically reduced illnesses and has extended our very lifespans.

One source says of this theoretical idea that too much cleanliness has led to an increase in asthma or allergies:

"It is in fact well established that poor sanitation practices contribute to high infant and child mortality rates in underdeveloped countries...[Thus,] A decrease in hand-washing increases the incidence of infectious diseases which may more than outweigh the benefit of a possible reduction in immune disorders."

Being exposed to certain things can be important. These things are dirt, dust, and animals. Early exposure can and does help prevent many allergies.

But being exposed to colds and flu does not "help build your immune system." Because you will never be immune to colds and flu.

If your kids are gonna get sick, it's better to have it happen when they are older, stronger, and more able to cope with being sick. And, of course, it's best to just try to avoid getting sick altogether.

It's just common sense, people. We learned it in kindergarten. Wash your hands.

---

And now for one last treat, I bring you this gem. A month or so ago, I was visiting the public restroom *shudder* at the local UW Bookstore . The stalls were all full, so I was waiting my turn. And as I waited, a boy, aged approximately nine years old, crawled, Army-style, out from under the handicapped-stall's door. Crawled. Belly-down. Hands palm-down. Face-down. Slithered. On the restroom floor. The public restroom floor. His mother said nothing of it, opened the stall door, and exited. Naturally, without washing their hands.

Many of you probably recoil in horror at imagining this, even though you aren't OCD Like Me. Why the horror? Isn't that child just bolstering his immune system? And if you say "no, that's just fucking gross," why do you think it's such a wonderful, immune-system-strengthening thing when kids catch colds or other nasties off other public surfaces, which in all likelihood are even filthier than that restroom floor? Why?

My motto: Avoid What You Can, Deal With What You Can't. And I prefer that we all avoid as many illnesses as possible. But that's just me.

P. much.

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.

:(