11th, OCD and Nuttiness in General
It’s cryptic, I know.
This past Saturday Matt and I celebrated (sort of) our 11th wedding anniversary. Yes, we got married quite young by society’s current standards. But I had just graduated from college and Matt finished shortly thereafter. I say “sort of” in terms of celebration because we had a house full of out-of-town guests: My friend and her two sons, and her twin sister and her three sons. And those five boys plus my son meant we had six boys all under the age of six-and-a-half running around, plus my two little girls. Let’s just say my cream berber carpet is now quite black in some areas. Hopefully I’ll find some good carpet cleaner!
As they were preparing to leave, one of the friends mentioned her 2 year-old son had suffered constant diarrhea during the last 2 days. To my horror, I watched as he shoved his hands down his diaper and then touch all of the baby’s toys. After the herd of friends left, my OCD kicked in and I proceeded that very night to clean the bathrooms, the floors, lysol down the toys, door knobs and anything else that might bring upon the dreaded Montezuma’s Revenge. I don’t know why, but lately I’ve become a bit of a germaphobe. I noticed it kicked in after my third child and I’m trying to figure out why… I’m obsessive and insistent with the hand sanitizer and hand washing and I feel uncomfortable whenever my children play with toys that don’t belong to them or when other children play with my children’s toys. I worry that they’ll catch gross diseases. For example, last summer my two year-old daughter caught hand-foot-mouth disease from who-knows-where and passed it to my five year-old. Last winter my son caught the stomach flu, twice, and passed the vomiting/diarrhea to my two year-old, twice. I realize that’s just the nature of the beast of childhood diseases; it goes around and then around and around some more.
As for the “nuttiness” of it all, I use the term in reference to my OCD, to seven little kids running around my house for three days (the baby is still immobile) and to laughing and having a good time with our friends. We did conduct a blind taste test of peanut butter between my fave Skippy and her fave Jif. We both preferred Jif. It was definitely a “nutty” weekend.