The Night Before School Starts

I was always one of those terrible little suck-up kids who loved school. (Right up until I turned 13 and decided I didn’t have any use for it anymore. Then I decided to take on the task of my education myself. But that’s another story entirely.) I remember how excited I was to go shopping for school supplies. Fresh pens and pencils and notebooks. The smell of the Office Depot with all the new binders and backpacks. Clean erasers.

A blank slate, on which no mistakes had been made. It was fabulous.

The night before a new school year was always so exciting. I loved the first few days of school, during which introductions were made and assignments were handed out. The rules were read and expectations were made clear. I never could sleep before school started. I was just too excited.

It’s not much different in college.

I’ve just come out on the other end of the longest break I’ve had in a year. And you know what? After about a week, I was done. When I’m not in school, I miss it. I thrive in an environment where my work is evaluated and I can excel. Lolling around my apartment day in and day out does nothing for me.

For the past two weeks, I’ve lain in bed at night and thought about how ready I was for school to start. Of course, tonight I’m thinking now unprepared I am.

I’ve signed up for 18 hours this semester. 18 ass-kicking hours. No fluff classes. Six of them are Intensive Russian II – a class that’s meant to be conducted entirely in Russian.

I haven’t bought all of my textbooks yet. That’s unusual for me. But it just didn’t work out the way it normally does.

I’m slogging my way through an online math placement test. I signed up for a statistics class because, well… I had to sign up for math of some kind… only to find out that I have to test my way into the class. Despite the fact that I’ve already received credit for the class’s prerequisite.

Despite all of that, I can’t wait to get started. Tomorrow, I’ll go to classes and be handed syllabi. They’ll tell me all of the rules and my life will get back to normal – crazy, hectic, normal.

Let’s just hope that I make it to bed before dawn. Schedule crunch has arrived and it’s make it or break it with this sleeping thing.

*Bobs

It Blows My Mind

Tomorrow, I promise to post all about the event we held this weekend. The one I was so worried about – suffice to say, it went over extremely well.

Tonight, I have to spend a little time talking about one of its after effects though, because honestly, it blows my mind.

Last week was OCD Awareness Week. It’s why we had our mini-conference when we did. And it’s something that, for obvious reasons, I paid pretty close attention to this year. I’m willing to bet that most people didn’t have a clue. This probably should have pissed me off, but mostly, it just drove me to put on a really great event and to DO something about the lack of knowledge that was out there.

I always thought that I was super out of the OCD closet. And, in the context of how I live with it today, I am. But this weekend, Kelly attended the mini-conference we held and sat in on the support group for “relationships.” It was the perfect place for her, because God knows she spends enough time being a support person – I knew she could provide some insight to the people there. While in her group, she had the opportunity to hear some parents speak. And this made her curious. What was my story? All the bits and pieces that I didn’t talk about?

When she said she wanted to do a blog on OCD, what I had in mind was that she would be writing about her experiences. Instead, she asked me about mine. And because I learned long ago that resistance is futile, I started to write. Bits and pieces. Things that I remembered from childhood. Things that I didn’t directly remember, but had seen in videos. Things that I wished people had done, and things that I wished they hadn’t.

When I was all done, I had 11 pages. 5200 words of what I would have deemed “whining.” See… in my 11 pages, I had violated several of my cardinal rules of thumb.

1. You don’t publicly speak ill of your family.
2. You don’t force people to read about your problems.
3. You most certainly don’t share with the world all of your most embarrassing rituals and compulsions.

Apparently, I wasn’t REALLY as out as I thought I was. But once I started writing for Kelly, I couldn’t stop writing. I couldn’t stop talking about all of the funny things I’d done when I was younger. I started remembering things that I hadn’t thought of in years. Some of it made me laugh. Checking the freezer for my dead parents? Admittedly, in retrospect, pretty funny. Some of it made me shake my head and go… wow…well THAT makes sense. I had never really considered that my three-year-old self got angry with daddy when he messed up song lyrics because I had OCD. But that one we have on film. It’s a running joke in our family now, and it always makes me giggle. But it makes me think too.

Some of it was hard to write. The summer I was 16 was hell. Reliving it wasn’t something that I had intended to do when I sat down to blog yesterday. But there it came, spilling out like water from a floodgate.

And then there was the whole “Dear God, what if my parents see this,” moment. I won’t lie. I’m still afraid they might. And I still feel a little guilty for representing them poorly. I certainly didn’t mean to. I didn’t talk to them, so they couldn’t have really known. More than that, my father lives with Schizophrenia and PTSD. His own mental illnesses are enough to keep anyone busy for a lifetime, and I don’t envy him them.

And they were – and are – good parents. Mixed in with the bad memories are some great ones, of cooking breakfast, pancakes in bed, sledding in the winter, and Carolina basketball.

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t want anyone to have the wrong impression. I just want the impression they have to be honest. And unfortunately for all of us, that includes some less than stellar moments of yelling and screaming and feeling frustrated and misunderstood.

But then, it’s entirely possible that I’m obsessing.

I sent my 5200 words to Kelly, who proclaimed that she was posting them all. “It’s too important,” she said. I’m not sure what went on in that meeting, but we must have made an impression. And I’m so glad that we did, because she’s right. It IS important. It’s important to me. To everyone living with OCD.

In the past 24 hours, the blog has received more hits than I can think of. It blows my mind that people want to read my story. Other friends are posting on fb about it. That baffles me too. I just never imagined that anyone would be all that interested.

But the comments have made it all worth it. And I’m glad that I gave it to her to post – and grateful to her for making it a big deal. I spend most of my life trying to act like OCD isn’t the driving force behind me. I want to be an advocate for it, but I never want people to think that I use it as an excuse to be less or not try as hard. I don’t want people to see my accommodations and think that I’m milking the system. So I make it not a big deal. As not a big deal as possible. And while I never want it to be the thing that defines me, I’m glad that occasionally, someone realizes it is a big deal.

I’ve said it before: I always feel guilty when I talk about this. I always wondered who would care? Who would really want to hear? But I am reminded today that talking about things makes them less scary and less stigmatized. So I’ll talk. And I’ll keep talking.

But it really does blow my mind that anyone wants to hear what I have to say.

So, for the curious… for those who haven’t read it already, here is what I wrote for Kelly: My Story

*Bobs

Generativity vs. Stagnation and Serial-Killing Maintenance Men

A few things that I have managed to get done over the past four days:

1. Went to Meineke. Spent two hours there. Got the car air conditioner fixed. It was broken because of something to do with a fuse and a condenser fan and pressure and a loss of Freon. I think the gremlins did it.
2. Fought a valiant battle against the fleas using heavy artillery, e.g. the expensive vet stuff. This seems to be having some effect, though I am now suffering from a severe case of psychosomatic itching. Anyone know what to take for that?
3. Allowed maintenance into my apartment, voluntarily, for the first time since I moved in. As I had a whole list of things to be fixed, it was a rather productive thing to do. And the maintenance man bought me lunch. Still – I dislike allowing anyone into my apartment when it is less than pristine, and as such, I spent most of Saturday and part of Sunday evening cleaning.
4. Had Monkey Boy Chaos for homeschooling. Considered throttling Monkey Boy Chaos. It was not a good morning. I lost my temper and got snippy. I yelled at the dog. The Boy wouldn’t listen. Tomato sauce got on my chair. But I did get Dave’s fabulous alfredo for dinner as a reward for not killing the boy. Not that I’d do that. I love him. Most of the time. The little monster.
5. Took an economics exam. Didn’t like it much. Think I missed a question on percentages.
6. Did approximately 1239532 loads of laundry.
7. Read lots of blogs. I’m not sure this counts as getting anything done. But I did it. I certainly did it.

As you can see, it’s been a busy few days. But not to worry. Soon, I shall go back to my old habit of doing nothing but languishing on my sofa. Probably sooner than I ought to. Really, I think I’m going though one of Erikson’s Eight Stages a bit early – Generativity vs. Stagnation. My desire to get things done is having a battle with my desire to curl up and watch Friends reruns.

Okay. So maybe that isn’t… exactly… what Erikson meant by Generativity vs. Stagnation. And maybe I’m not even in that stage of life yet, and won’t be for another 15 years. And maybe my underwear is black today.

Not that that has anything to do with anything.

I’m in a weird mood tonight.

The truth is, I’m currently torn between my extreme need for a real vacation and my longing to get back to my UT. I realize, in hindsight, that taking so many classes this summer was a mistake. I realize that not actually taking a break between a 15 hour semester and an 18 hour semester was probably a very bad idea. I realize that the last time I had any extended period of time off was Christmas.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit jealous of all of the places that my friends have gone this summer. But more than that, I’m jealous of the time off they’ve had. More than once in the past few weeks, I’ve considered getting in my car and just driving – driving ANYWHERE. Driving to Missouri to see Janet. Driving to the beach. Maybe Bowlegs, Oklahoma. Just cause.

Of course, because the air conditioner wasn’t working and this is, after all, Texas, I never made it much farther than Lockhart. And last time I was there, I ended up with a stomach bug, which made it much less enjoyable.

All I’m really looking for here is a little time to sit down and read, write, or simply do nothing – without having a test date in the back of my mind.

Of course, I know how miserable I generally am when I don’t have about eight thousand projects. But really. I think I need to remind myself of this misery. You know. So I don’t seek it out again in the future.

On the other hand, I find myself desperately missing UT. Not that there is anything wrong with ACC, mind you, but Economics, Government, and online classes in Sociology and Psychology aren’t doing a whole lot to stimulate me. Even when I’m drowning in work at UT, I love that I am being forced to think and be creative. I’m so excited about my schedule this fall that I want to turn cartwheels.

I should mention that, this fall, I’m taking 18 hours of classes, including a 6-hour intensive Russian class.

But I know the classes will be both challenging and entertaining. What’s even weirder though, is that I’m looking forward to being back on campus. I’m actually starting to miss the people. I know. I KNOW. Bobbi doesn’t do people. Bobbi is chronically anti-social.

That isn’t entirely true though. My friend Eric will be back from Germany soon. Erica just recently returned from Croatia. I’m taking a Research Methods class with a friend I made during orientation, Jill. She wasn’t in any of my classes last Spring, and I found that I really missed her.

Despite my best efforts, I’ve developed… relationships. It’s strange.

I miss being on campus with all sorts of places to go and just be.

I will, of course, go back to hating campus as soon as I start trying to park there again. If not then, when I go to the Union or the FAC and find that there are no places to sit because, well, there are 50,000 students at this school.

Still, I look forward to getting back to school – to MY school. Because honestly? I’m bored stiff with the classes I’m taking.

That’s it, really. I’m having an internal battle between being so tired that I don’t want to do anything, and being so bored that I want to add about twelve more things to my schedule. Or, perhaps, just sleep for the remainder of the summer.

In other news… there isn’t very much other news. Oh – wait.

I spent rather a lot of time in my economics class today worrying about the possibility that my maintenance man was a serial killer.

I like my maintenance man. He’s nice. He bought me lunch today. I had a lovely and pleasant conversation. But clearly, I have been watching too much Criminal Minds. And with my penchant for overreaction and irrational thought, by the time I was getting ready to leave for class, I was starting to wonder things like: why did my maintenance man know that the rifle in my closet is a .22 caliber? Why did my maintenance man buy me lunch and talk to me when I am so obviously not a a social creature? Why was my maintenance man so friendly?

The answer to these questions, by the way, is that 1. It isn’t hard to tell what a .22 caliber rifle looks like, and that 2. My maintenance man is nice. And friendly.

Did I mention I actually like my maintenance man? And that I feel guilty for considering the fact that he might be a cleverly disguised serial killer?

My response to these questions was to go off on a string of irrational thinking that included such thoughts as: He made friends with Cooper, and now Cooper will let him into the apartment without trying to kill him. He knows where I keep my gun. He knows that one of the locks on my sliding glass door is broken. Oh yeah, and he’s maintenance. So he has a key. (I don’t know that I even THOUGHT about that at the time.)

Clearly, the threat was there. He might sneak into my apartment and hide in my shower so that he could kill me later.

I hid my rifle. And stalked my shower with a baseball bat when I got home.

Obviously, I am still alive.

And really, find the whole thing very funny.

Which means, I think, that I need to get out more.

*Bobs

Flea Wars – An Attack of Obsessive Proportions

So, I took a few days off from posting.

Why, you ask?

Is it because I had a Psych exam I needed to study for? (Of course not – I often blog when I should be studying. I’m responsible and mature like that.)

Is it, then, perhaps, because I’ve developed some kind of social life outside of my computer? (Stop laughing. It isn’t THAT unreasonable.)

Maybe I just ran out of things to say. (I’ll wait while you pick yourselves up off the floor. ROFL isn’t really supposed to be literal, you know.)

No. My sabbatical had nothing to do with any rational reason. My sabbatical was due to something so evil, so nasty, so disastrous that I haven’t wanted to be in my house, let alone to sit still in it long enough to type anything.

Fleas. Dirty, stinking, rotten FLEAS.

Now, many of you might point out that fleas don’t typically bite humans. That really, the fleas are harmless, if annoying. That a good dose of flea medication and a new vacuum bag will fix the problem lickety-split. And that might have been the case, for any normal, rational, human being. But me? Heh. Heheheh.

Let me explain to you how this all played out.

It all started on Tuesday morning, with Kelly. (See? It’s always Kelly’s fault.) I awoke to an instant message from Kelly that went something like this:

My mother-in-law needs to take her cat to the vet, so you’re watching my children this afternoon.

Okay, fine. It wasn’t quite like that. She even said “please.” She’s usually pretty good like that. She’ll say please even when she and I both know that her request isn’t optional.

So off I went to deal with children. Lovely children. Lovely, children who, for all intents and purposes, were attempting to drive me to the insane asylum quickly. The little munch awoke screaming, and remained screaming for quite a long time. And about the time that she went to sleep, Monkey Boy Chaos came out of his room protesting that he didn’t WANT to nap because he needed to burn off some energy and that, by the way, did I know my phone had rung? All of this woke up the little munch again, and she promptly returned to screaming. It was glorious.

But, I digress.

I called Kelly back. I believe it went something like this:

What do you want, you horrible toad, and how dare you call me when your children (whom you can’t see) are driving me crazy!

My mother-in-law’s cat has fleas.

You called me to tell me about FLEAS? FLEAS?!? I don’t care about FLEAS! And the phone rang, and your son came out to tell me, and that woke your daughter up, and now she’s mad again, and this is all your fault, and you need to come home now so that I can hang you by your toes and beat you. Also, your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.

What?

You don’t believe that was exactly how that conversation went either. Okay. FINE. I’m just trying to be entertaining here. I did not call her a horrible toad. Nor did I taunt her with insults from Monty Python.  Or threaten to hang her by her toes and beat her.

The rest of it is true, though. I told her to bugger off, not to call me about fleas that were on a cat I didn’t know, and hung up the phone.

And then, I started obsessing about fleas. I thought about fleas all night. (Though I’d have denied it at the time.) I came home, stared at The Super Duper Cooper Pooper Puppy and thought, what if he has fleas? He can’t have fleas. Where would he have picked up fleas? And then I tried to read by Psychology book.

Sometime around two in the morning, I gave in and checked him for fleas.

I found them.

And promptly went off the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder deep end. Usually, my symptoms are manageable these days. Usually, I stop short of doing anything completely crazy in the name of OCD. Usually, I just come across as anal with a side of persnickety thrown in. But fleas? that wasn’t going to work for me.

Within two minutes, I had dragged my dog to the bathroom, turned on the shower, and shoveled him into it. And then, fully clothed, I jumped in behind him.

Yes, you did read that right. I took a shower, in my jeans, shirt, bra, and panties, with my dog, using a non-flea specific shampoo that I knew perfectly well would do absolutely no good. I wasn’t stupid. I’ve been a dog owner for years. I know that you can’t just wash fleas away. But in the shower we went, because it was either that, or run out of my house screaming.

By the end of the shower, I was kind of wishing I had run from my house screaming.

As I got wetter and wetter, covered in sopping sticky labrador hair, these thoughts ran through my mind at the rate of about 200 times per second.

He’s been on my carpet. If they’re on him, they must be on the carpet. And the couch. And in the car. Damn it, he’s been in the car. That means the car is infested. And he sheds. The hair goes everywhere. It’s on my walls. It’s under my furniture. The fleas are everywhere and they’re going to all hatch and then I’m never going to be able to get rid of them and my house will be filled up with fleas and people will think that I’m filthy and…

This dog sleeps in my bed. He’s been in my BED. On my blankets. And my sheets. And he has fleas. Which means there must be fleas on my blankets. And my sheets. So they’re dirty and I can’t sleep on them.

Oh FRACK. I’m out of laundry detergent. I can’t wash my bedding if I have no laundry detergent. And my grocery store closed two hours ago. And anyway, my dog is sopping wet, so I can’t leave him loose in the house while I go to the other grocery store.

WHY DON’T I HAVE FLEA MEDICATION IN STOCK???

I’ll have to vacuum tomo…. ARGH! The vacuum isn’t working either! Why did my vacuum have to stop working just before we got fleas?

MY HOUSE IS INFESTED! It isn’t clean! It’ll never be clean! And I’m covered in wet dog hair. And the fleas aren’t dying. And how did I let him get fleas in the first place? I have an exam on Thursday morning, I don’t have time to disinfect my house tomorrow. I still need to read 250 pages of textbook.

I can’t have fleas. This is unacceptable. I quit.

And then I went and jumped off a bridge.

Or not. But I kind of wanted to. Because, irrational though my actions were, my thoughts were actually quite accurate. I had fleas. They were probably everywhere. I had no laundry detergent and my vacuum wasn’t working.

An hour after climbing into the shower in my clothes, my soaking wet Labrador and I emerged. I stripped myself of the jeans (because wet denim is miserable) and, without bothering to put on pants (as it was now three in the morning), I hauled Cooper to the patio.

Where I ran into my neighbor, Jenny.

Let me repeat that for those of you who missed it. I went outside, wearing only a wet shirt, wet bra, and wet polka dotted underwear, with my dripping wet labrador, at three in the morning – and ran into my neighbor.

Luckily, I’m not shy and she isn’t easily offended. After exchanging some general information on fleas, I went back inside and took my SECOND shower of the night. That is, after I used drain cleaner to unclog the massive amounts of flea-infested labrador hair from my shower drain.

My second shower lasted almost an hour too. It took me that long to rid myself of the wet fur coat of labrador hair that was covering me.

Of course, I didn’t really want to go to sleep in my bed. Or on my couch. Or on my floor. It was nearly four-thirty in the morning by now anyway. The couch did finally win my sleep for a couple of hours, but as soon as I woke up, I put on clothes and left the house. I didn’t want to EAT here with the fleas, after all.

And, when I returned, I went to the patio. I read nearly all 250 pages of my textbook sitting on the patio, because I didn’t want to go inside. I did, of course, eventually sleep, with the aid of some pharmaceuticals I have just for obsessive-meltdown occasions such as these. (Did I mention that I REALLY don’t deal well with contamination?)

Today, the dog got a bath with flea and tick shampoo. And he got combed, twice, with a flea comb. And he got medicine put on him. The floor was vacuumed, sprayed, and vacuumed again. Ditto the couch. The bed is in the washing machine as we speak. Every square inch of this living room has been sprayed for fleas. Tomorrow morning, I will do it again.

Maybe I’ll bomb when I go to Lockhart this weekend.

I’m at war here, people. It’s me or the fleas, and last time I checked, they don’t pay rent. Nasty, interloping free riders. Just ask the ants I did battle with last November how I feel about nasty, interloping free riders in my apartment? Oh, wait. You can’t. They’re all DEAD.

The Super Duper Cooper Pooper Puppy deserves a medal for tolerating obsessive scrubbing, brushing, grooming, and medicating for two days running.

As for me, I think I may have created a new definition of insanity. Nothing says nuts quite like showering with your clothes on to kill fleas that you know you can’t kill with what you have on hand. Don’t worry, though. Soon, the men in white coats will come to take me away (ha ha, ho ho, he he). Or, you know. I’ll suck it up and deal with it. And vacuum. Frequently.

Because, well, it’s just what I do.

And you can never vacuum too much anyway, right?

I hate fleas. *cries*

*Bobs, Destroyer of Fleas