OCD Irony

Funny how I go out of my way to avoid exposures that most people wouldn't even consider exposures (say, touching a door handle) and then I go and get an actual exposure because I'm just not that careful. As part of the precursor to my roofing project, today I installed soffit vents in my house. (not recommended by the way. It didn't take that long, but I'm exhausted!) Anyway, in two corners of the house, either a bird had built a nest, or random crap had just settled over the years. When I opened up the hole to add the vent, a massive amount of junk came out: sticks, insulation, roofing materials, wood, dirt and dust. Just a mess. And during the first one, I wasn't wearing even a minimal face mask. No eye protection either. Probably took 5 years off my life breathing all that in. Oops.

Dreaming?

I know someone else blogged about this recently. I don't think it was me, but it blurs after a while.

OCD generally does not infiltrate my dreams. Last night, however, I dreamed about people sneezing on me; I got sick. I woke up and thought, hey, where'd my sore throat go?!

I don't remember that ever happening to me before (which means it probably wasn't me who blogged about it). There was another OCD component to the dream, but as often happens once you're fully awake, I can't remember it.

STAY OUT OF MY SLEEP, OCD!

Summer

Nothing noteworthy going on right now. Summer is a great time. I've gotten links to some interesting OCD-related stuff in my inbox lately, and when I get a little more organized, I'll post some of it.

I'm probably getting a new roof soon. I'm trying not to let the process turn into an OCD-fest. Never easy.

Not Quite Out

I seriously considered attending last weekend's OCD conference in San Diego. I'm getting jealous reading the accounts of those who did go. And it would have been great to put faces to some of your blogs out there. Ultimately, three things kept me from attending (and fear of hotels was not even one of them, so that's cool). One, it's kinda pricy to fly large distances and stay in hotels. Two, late July is one of the few times that Portland's weather is likely to rival San Diego's. Sure enough, last weekend was simply gorgeous here, and it's hard to lose out on some of the rare decent weather we get.

Third, and by far the most important, is that I have a close friend in San Diego. I'd love to visit her, and I couldn't see visiting San Diego without letting her know I was there. But I also couldn't see letting her know WHY I was there. Conundrum. Despite being a close friend, I've never told her about my OCD. I don't ever find it shocking when someone I know discloses mental illness issues, but I'm not very open with my own. Maybe that will change, but as yet, it has not.

Score One For Sitting With Anxiety

My neighbor has bamboo. While I worry about its invasive nature at times, I've grown to really enjoy that bamboo: the rustling of the leaves is quite lovely. So yeah, my neighbor has bamboo. And a wood fence. Despite its loveliness, sometimes when the bamboo meets the wood fence, a horrible horrible whining noise ensues. A "sets my teeth on edge" noise. It was only when I recently painted my house that I identified the source of this noise that's been going on for months. Knowing what it was somehow made it worse. "The bamboo. The bamboo!!!" There's a reasonably simple solution- well, turns out there are several. My neighbor regularly thins the bamboo. So all I needed to do was ask if she could thin the offending pieces. But once I decided to do that, I felt I HAD to ask her as soon as possible, despite having survived months of the noise. If I didn't ask right away, I might never get to. And she might move, and the new neighbors might not want to thin the bamboo. And I might have to live with the noise forever, and I might never sleep again due to the noise. Really, I thought all this, despite not having lost any sleep to speak of in the months the noise had occurred.

So of course my neighbor, who's always out in her yard, was nowhere to be found for more than 48 hours. I stewed and stressed during those hours. Actually, once in the middle of the 48 hours, I did see her on the porch. But by this point, I had realized that the waiting was really good for me. So I waited some more. My sense of urgency waned.

And then I learned that another solution involved me just pushing the offending bamboo behind other pieces, so they could no longer hit the fence. The bushy leaves at the top keep the stems anchored in the new spot. Ah, silence! So, yeah, having solved the problem, I can't tell what I would have done otherwise, but I really did experience that decrease in anxiety even before the fix, and I really really love it when that happens.

Having Visitors

Usually when someone calls me and says they're stopping by, I'm thrown into something of a panic. Just a generic, something bad seems likely to happen sort of thing. So I was thrilled when my sister stopping by with her kids didn't throw me. EXCEPT, that I became worried about my bathroom making them sick. I don't really know why that would be, but when does that ever stop me from worrying.

I did my standard "once a month" clean of the bathroom, and up they came. And of course they didn't use my bathroom. They did use the bathroom at the city park. hahaha, I'm pretty sure my bathroom was less creepy than that one.

Gum

Today at work I dropped a piece of gum on my chair (unchewed). I picked it up and put it in my mouth. I thought it was going to fall on the floor. I would have picked it up and chewed it from there, too. Now sure, this may just reflect how much I wanted that gum, but I still choose to view it as progress.