Parks and Recreation, Plus Poop.

Yesterday was a tough day, anxiety-wise. We went Maya's little BFF's 5th birthday party, along with a zillion other little school friends of this little girl. The party was lovely--a gorgeous day at the park and splash pad, food, drinks, games, a fabulous hostess. I thought I would have an easier time of it, since we were outdoors with fresh air and such, but as always, OCD manages to make its appearance.

It first appeared when the watermelon was being sliced. It hadn't been washed first; in fact it had been sitting on the super grody cement floor of the covered park area. (And seriously, people, you really ARE supposed to wash your damn dirty melons, whether or not you have OCD.)

So there sat the unwashed melon, sliced up and sitting on a picnic table, mocking me. Mocking, I tell you. Maya kept asking, "Can I have some watermelon? Please? Please? I really want some!" And I kept trying to distract her. But finally I had to give in. Because who doesn't let their kid eat watermelon at a picnic? I said a prayer to the Patron Saint of Escherichia coli and let my child dive in.

Jo, 1. OCD, 0.

...Not that I'm sitting here on pins and needles, waiting 1-10 days for the first appearance of hemorrhagic colitis, which is characterized by the sudden onset of abdominal pain and severe cramps, followed within 24 hours by diarrhea, soon becoming watery and grossly bloody, along with vomiting and fever, bowel necrosis and perforation, progressing to hemolytic uremic syndrome, which then causes acute kidney failure in infants and young children, where the infection continues to move into the cells’ cytoplasm and then shut down the cells’ protein machinery, resulting in cellular injury or death, and subsequent damage to vital organs such as the kidney, pancreas, and brain. Nope. Not me. Doesn't mean I'm sitting here for 1-10 days on pins and needles at all.

Also, not that I noticed or anything, but...

On a hot tin table.

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The second moment of panic came when the cake was served. She had handmade a gorgeous cake, but it came in segments that had to be placed together. The cake was totally stuck to the plate it was on, so it required massive amounts of manhandling with bare fingers to be smooshed together with the other parts. At one point my friend, recognizing what was going on in my sweaty brain, said, "I know Jo is having a heart attack right now." No, not a heart attack, friend. Mere palpitations. I answered, "Maya will have a center piece, please." And gave her my best, watery "I'ne jos keeding!" smile.

Observe, actual finger impressions:

I could have refused to let Maya have a piece, but come on. Look at this face. She is actually salivating, tongue out:

Friend, I love you, and you are beautiful, and your party was beautiful. But you gotta know how bad my shits were freaked. I know that none of this is news to you. ;) Because you love me despite my OCD, and I love you despite your lack of it. ;)

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Anyway. The third offender of the day was...THE HOT TIN SLIDE!!

Today, it did not have fossilized human poop on it.

But it sure as hell did have baked-on, caked-on BIRD SHIT.

Dun...DUN...DUNNNNN

Sigh.

Just another day at the park, OCD-style.

[You Don't Wanna] Cook With JoJo!

It's time for a cooking lesson, child. I call this one "Cookin' Wit Me, Oh Cee Dee Stylee!" I like to keep it hip, keep it real, for the fresh crowd.

• When cooking ground beef, most people just use the same spoon or spatula the whole way through. They plop in the raw meat, let it cook a bit, give it a stir, (probably) set the spoon down on the counter *dry heaves*, then occasionally give the meat a few more stirs until it is cooked-ish. But by doing this, you are jamming the same spoon containing the original raw ground beef germs right into the now-finished product. What you need to do instead is to switch utensils, at least once throughout. I like to wait until the ground beef is almost totally browned, then I switch to a clean spatula and give it a nice finishing simmer, letting the heat seek and destroy, stirring several more times.

• The same is true with chicken. If you're grilling some up on the BBQ or in a pan, after one side of the chicken has been browned and you take your tongs to flip the bitch over, one side of the tongs has touched totally raw chicken. So you will keep using these tongs to keep flipping the chicken, and then you will remove the chicken from the pan or BBQ with SAME SAME TONGS. Do you Smell the Salmonella What the Rock is Cooking?? Or maybe you use a fork to turn your chicken. The fork stabs into the raw chickie, spreading the same raw juices throughout, every time you turn it. Or maybe you are baking some marinated chicken in the oven, occasionally spooning the marinade over the chicken as it bakes. The marinade was originally chock-full of delicious raw chicken bugs. So please, for the love of hygienia(TM), switch utensils! Change your spatula 3/4 of the way (maybe 9/10 of the way) through cooking ground beef. Switch tongs after both sides of the chicken have been seared. Let the chicken bake thoroughly after you've given it one last covering of marinade (using a new spoon). etc.

• And believe it or not, you should also do the same with eggs! As I scramble them, when they are almost done and need one last flip, I use a new spatula. I scoop them up from underneath, the side that is hot and fully-cooked, and I give 'em a flip, so that you can cook the germs off the top as well.

Sounds simply, and reasonable, donn'it? Although, somehow, for me, it never end up being quite so simple. I manage to go through about 27 utensils and 14 plates and 4 forks and 6 knives (such as when I cut the chicken to see if it's cooked through). My dishwasher usually won't accommodate the amount of cookery I've cookered with for that one simple meat dish.

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Now that's food cookin' OCD stylee (well, I actually think that's not just an OCD thing, it's just good practice. I have a hard time eating burgers at other people's houses, because I'm like, "Now son I know you ain't switched your flipper 'fore you flipped that there burger one last time!"). 

Anyway. As for food handlin', ye gods that's an arduous process for someone like me. I used to be able to barehand the meat with a little TLC (twss) and then just wash thoroughly afterward (usually at least twice, because meat fats tend to make the soap not foam very well on my hands, and I feel like I'm just smearing around e.coli wax). 

Now, I've regressed progressed to using rubber gloves. Those silver nitrile exam ones you get at Costco by the trillions. Especially when handling chicken, because I always trim the fat off. There's nothing worse than crunchy, rubbery chicken fat in a deliciously cooked meal. So I don my gloves, pull out a plastic cutting board, and take out my meat scissors. Then I open the package of chicken, carefully, so carefully, not letting it drip anywhere, and throwing the packaging carefully, so carefully, into the garbage.

I season or slice or chop the chicken, then place it carefully in my cooking dish of choice (grilling pan, glass oven pan, etc.). Then with one gloved hand, I grab the mid-wrist area of the other gloved hand, and peel off that glove. Then I use the now-turned-inside-out glove to remove the other glove, and I carefully, so carefully, throw them away.  Then I wash my hands.

I place the dish in to bake or whatnot or whathaveyou or saywhatnow, and then I fuckin wash my hands again. Because come on.

Then the entire kitchen area is Clorox-wiped.

Now, God forbid I have to marinate, or STORE, some chicken. I employ the same process as above as far as the rubber gloves go, and trim/season, slice it, but when it comes time to put the chicken into a ziplock bag to either marinate or freeze for later use, I scream out, "Husband! O dear husband! Need you!"

He comes along, and holds open the ziplock bag as wide as it will go, which is never quite wide enough, and I carefully, so carefully, place the chicken into the bag. Then I remove my gloves as detailed above, zip the bag closed, and then DOUBLE-BAG the fucker (twss), only to wash my hands yet again. Maybe twice, maybe thrice. And he washes too.

It's all very stressful. 

But got-damn am I a fine cook, and you should try my Aztec Chicken Casserole, or maybe my Taco Chicken with Jack Cheese & Salsa.

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FYI, I've been reading The Help, just like the rest of America. And I laughed my proverbial bum-bum off when I read this passage, where Minny was working with Celia, trying to teach her some good  goddamn sense:

Minny, the hired help: "We lay the battered raw chicken on the rail. Then I have to remind the ding-dong for the bobillionth time to wash her hands before she kills us both."

*snort*