If you're looking for tickets to ride the crazy train, I've got 'em right here. I am so far beyond crazy today that I've circled back around to just this side of normal. Essentially, I am in the same red zone as Courtney Love and Glenn Beck.
What I've been doing, before I decided I'd better sit down and pour the nut juice (that sounded dirty) into words on my computer screen, is cleaning. That may not sound crazy to you, probably because you're NOT crazy. When the OCD Chick is cleaning though, especially when I am in straight up whackadoo mode is really not cleaning at all. It's more like bothering.
I take the Clorox Wipes and I bother things. I bother the light switches roughly 87,000 times because light switches are where little black devils of germy evilness like to lurk.
I bother the door handles somewhere around 107,000 times because I am positive everything from fecal matter to sperm to tiny bits of Ann Coulter DNA cover them. You know why, right? Because people do not wash their hands properly, that's why. They do things nobody talks about and then they touch the door handles. I'm convinced that in my domicile, my family is doing these things nobody wants to talk about and then walking through the house randomly touching doorknobs and laughing maniacally.
It's how they pay me back for burning everything I ever try to cook.
Although by now I've made my hands sting from the Clorox, I feel sure I am still sitting in a virtual boiling pot of grossness, and since I can't get the Clorox to take me to the clean feeling I need, I start taking out my frustration in other ways.
Only moments ago, I told Buddy the Yorkie that his real mother didn't want him so she gave him up for adoption. He had no idea. Still not feeling any relief from my obsessive-compulsive wonderland of stress I turned my venomous tongue on Tanner the Yorkie.
"Remember that one time when I took you to the Vet and you came home without your balls? Well, I lied. I really DID pay him to do that to you."
I can't get settled today and as a result, I'm on a rampage of crazy. If Mr. Man and Dog return to this house today and find me in any state other than catatonic, they should be pleased. In other news, if Mr. Man and Dog return to this house today and do not immediately head to the bathroom to wash Ann Coulter off their hands, I'm gonna boil them.
In Clorox. While I force them to watch Glenn Beck AND listen to Courtney Love. 77777777 times no less.
Yes... I'm writing real words today rather than vlogging. If you're looking to take the easy road by watching rather than reading, just scroll down. But I have to tell you, I'm disappointed in your laziness.
"Dearest Sher," said the man in the white coat with the letters D & R in front of his name, "as you are about to begin cognitive behavior therapy for your OCD, I'm going to give you Zoloft in the hopes that it will make the misery that is therapy easier."
"Well then bring the shit on," said Me, "cause cognitive behavior therapy is gonna suck goat's balls and that's not fun for me."
At 45, I decided after watching too much Oprah and touching the burners on the stove one too many times, that I was going to put myself in CBT. If that TV doctor can cure OCD by making crazy people lick dirty stuff, them by gawd, I was gonna get me some of that mental wellness.
Although I have an aversion to meds of almost any kind, my level of crazy had reached such a point that I thought, "What the hell? If that pretty pill can make this misery any less, then I'm all about it."
Having now been on Zoloft for roughly 5 or 6 months, I have to confess that it's truly helped the OCD. I am able to do some things that would have been completely impossible a year ago and the cognitive behavior therapy is at least somewhat tolerable.
But today, I got the wake up call that only a woman can appreciate and it has convinced me that I'd rather suffer the CBT without aid of meds. Check it out y'all. Exhibit A...
My face is as big as Seattle and I have more chins than a Chinese phone book. (Yes I know that's an old joke but I'm distraught for godsake. Shut up.)
Of course I've realized my clothes are getting increasingly tighter and that the scale is becoming more and more my enemy. But somehow, I've managed to trick my weak brain into believing it was no big deal.
Really, Sher? Really? You thought this was NO BIG DEAL??? For godsake, look at my stomach! And who did I think I was fooling? Apparently myself. It seems I was actually fooling myself about my own ginormous face and ass.
Sweet Lord!
So tomorrow we begin tapering off the magic Z before Z is the size pants I have to start buying. Yes - cognitive behavior therapy is gonna kick my ass ten different ways and I'm NOT going to like it. I think I like my ginormity a whole lot less though.
Sometimes in life a girl finds herself through no fault of her own in a "hotel" where the doors open right into the parking lot and the ice machine is tucked away under the exterior stairs.
Having recently experienced such a delight, I felt I could do the women who read my column a great service by offering a guide if you will, about what to expect during your stay while also avoiding unwanted disease.
And pregnancy.
Identify the motel as "seedy.
The first clue that your hotel may indeed be minus 4 stars is the signage. I'm not talking about the name of the hotel as much as I am the marketing message either on a lighted sign out front or a big white banner strung across the building.
If you notice your hotel is almost too proud of the fact that they have color TV, mini fridges or air conditioning in MOST rooms, the hotel might be seedy. If you notice any of the letters are backwards or they have used a lower case "o" in place of a zero, your hotel is definitely seedy. The check in.
Upon entering the hotel, you'll be greeted by a young woman who looks terribly surprised. Don't be confused. She's not really surprised. She's just taken care to shave off the eyebrows Jesus gave her and draw on brand new ones that arch almost up to her hair line. It's my belief that she probably changes their shape according to her mood, but I'd need to do further research to be sure.
After filling out the coffee stained card she hands you that asks for your home address and the pin number to your bank account, she'll give you a big smile while handing you the key card that LUCKY YOU is also a coupon for 10% off a pizza. It's important not to stare directly at her no matter how prominently that one giant tooth is pushed out in front of the others. Staring at a seedy hotel clerk is like teasing a chained Pit Bull. Next thing you know you'll be at the ER having a giant gold tooth extracted from your nose.
The room.
The good news is walking from your car to your room takes only 1.5 steps. The bad news is walking from your car to your room takes only 1.5 steps. That's why you shouldn't be surprised when upon opening the door you are greeted by the strong scent of exhaust and Aqua Velva. Take heart though. Once your eyes stop burning and they are able to focus again, the bed spreads on the 2 - that's two - more than one and less than three beds, will shock your system so much, you temporarily lose your sense of smell.
Picture a crazy combination of giant flowers colored in faded blue, mauve, green and cigarette smoke. Now take a moment to remember how you felt that one time you drank tequila all night and then went to Denny's for an omelet and then woke up on the bathroom floor with your arm around the base of the toilet with someone else's pants on wondering how it was possible to eat an entire Grand Slam without actually digesting any of it.
Given a choice of looking at these bedspreads and going back in time to puking green peppers through your nose, you would choose the latter without any hesitation.
But wait! There's more!
On the wall, no more than three feet away from the TV, you'll be happy to know you'll have your very own iron and ironing board. Well not yours really as the hotel will have taken great care to make sure you know it belongs to them. In black Sharpie, on the iron itself, they will have written "Days Inn!!!Room 117!!!" only "days" is not capitalized, but "Inn" is. You may ask yourself if that stain on the ironing board could be because someone tried to iron while also eating a peanut butter cup.
Don't.
The bathroom.
If you've ever wondered what it would be like to pee while fixing yourself a nice drink in a plastic cup AND putting your feet up on the bed, you're about to live the dream. That's because at the seedy hotel, they delight in making sure they cram all the necessities in life into as small a space as possible. The toilet is seperated from the bathtub by approximately 3 inches and is located "bed adjacent".
Don't worry if you forget any toilitries though. You'll be excited to know they've left a tiny paper wrapped bar of soap for your use that smells slightly better than your room but not as good as your dog's ass.
Oh! I almost forgot! If you see anything lying on the bathroom floor that you cannot readily identify from a distance, don't pick it up for closer examination. Just go ahead and tell yourself somewhere there is an amputee spider that met a terrible fate on the bathroom floor. The remote.
This final advice is really important. Before you pick up the remote that is roughly the size of your microwave, please do whatever necessary to locate some Clorox Wipes and clean it up completely. In the absence of Clorox Wipes, just leave it where it is and watch Gilligan's Island in your head.
The Surgeon General has determined the remote in a seedy hotel is literally teeming with sperm. He found that men who sleep in seedy motels often are recently released inmates who are easily aroused by the sight of a prominent tooth and typically release their pent up, shall we say, urges. It's for this reason you also should not touch the in room fridge, the light switches or the smoke detector.
If you should accidentally touch any of these things, for God's sake wash your hands before scratching your nose or rubbing your eyes. That's where Nadya Suleman went wrong.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ A big thank you goes out to my following homies for helping me survive my adventure into seedy hotel land. To Ryland - for offering crafty things I could do with a marker and meth buying ettiquette; to Eric - for telling me funny stories that he thought would make me feel like it wasn't so bad where I was (but it was); to the Evil ER - for offering to sing me to sleep. May all your travels be happy and your hotels have interior doors.
Sometimes life’s a struggle. Sometimes it’s a train wreck. But what do you do when it’s even worse than that? I wish I’d known the answer to that in February of 1990. That’s when I was first diagnosed with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Looking back, I now realize there were precursors to my illness, but on that cold, snowy Thursday, it hit me like a lightening bolt.
As a dental hygienist, working in spit and blood on a regular basis really didn’t faze me. Until that day. That awful moment. Suddenly, a thought latched onto my brain. “What if,” the awful thought prodded me, “you don’t get your equipment clean enough? What if there’s still some blood and germs left on the surfaces? And, what if your next patient gets some awful disease from the previous patient because of it? Worst of all, what if you get some disease from it?” I hated that mean, obnoxious thought!
I became obsessed with cleaning everything in that room. I couldn’t top disinfecting, wiping, scrubbing. And the thought zipped around in my mind as a terrifying loop. I’d never experienced anything like that before. Where had it come from? And why did it pick ME to latch onto?
Before I even made my first appointment with a psychiatrist, I pretty much knew what was happening to me. I’d had enough psychology classes in college to figure it out. That still didn’t prepare me for his diagnosis. After much discussion, and a long, drawn out written evaluation, he determined I had severe OCD. One of the worst cases he ever seen, in fact. Lucky me.
I ran into even more trouble at work. My militant employer hated to be even one minute behind schedule. Unfortunately, my cleaning and re-cleaning caused me to fall farther behind after every patient. That didn’t go over well with the dentist.
The OCD soon spilled over into my home life. I became afraid of most things in my house. I couldn’t seem to get my hands clean enough. They bled from the repeated scrubbings. I became so terrified of going places and being near people, it was a struggle just to leave my house. I quit my job. I just couldn’t cope with it anymore. It got worse. I began seeing things that weren’t there. My mind continually told me lies. And I fell for each and every one.
Sound awful? It was. Not only didn’t I know how I’d make it through each day; I had trouble coping from one minute to the next.
Fast forward to today. After years of visits to my psychiatrist, three times a week, I now only see him once a year. But even with his treatment, I would never have made it without medication. Prozac became my new best friend. It still is. I will never stop taking it. Believe me; no one wants me to, either!
If you suffer from severe OCD, and are resisting treatment, please re-consider. When I think back to all I’ve gone through, and how much better I am now, I can’t believe I ever resisted taking medication. I am now happier and healthier than I ever believed possible. Take heart! Help is available for you!
There are some gross people in this country. And by some, I mean millions. The ACLU requires that I not use the word gross. They advocate the more politically correct “clean-challenged”. Although I always try to do what the ACLU thinks is best for me and those around me, I’m tossing my cookies to the wind and calling a nasty a nasty. They are gross.
Let the law suits begin.
No matter where you are when reading this, you either personally know or have been in some way affected by a gross person. If you are not aware of any grossness among your family, friends or co-workers, that is a clear indicator that you yourself are gross.
Normally I require gross people first boil themselves in a combination of Clorox and Peroxide before continuing to read anything I’ve written, but because I think you could learn something from my insight, I will allow you to stick around until the end. Just be sure you don’t touch my picture.
Those of you who are not gross know exactly what I’m talking about.
Walk into any public restroom in America and you often have to ask yourself whether you may have accidentally wandered into the one reserved for “Big Dirty Poop Throwing Guerillas”. The level of nasty in our nation’s public potty spaces is simply unspeakable.
Allow me to try and speak it anyway.
The very first thing you see when entering one of these places is that the trash cans are overflowing with wet, brown, paper towels. To the untrained eye that would indicate a great many people who have passed through that room have paused to wash their hands and are therefore good and decent Americans who understand that cleanliness is next to godliness.
Only terrorists use the bathroom without washing their hands after.
Upon further investigation, however, one will find that is not the case. Anyone who cannot master the intricate mechanics of flushing a toilet does not possess the fine motor skills necessary to rub their hands together in a back and forth motion.
So where do all those wet towels come from? My OCD factory second brain will not allow me to even contemplate why all that paper is wet if not a byproduct of hand washing.
I guess I could contemplate it if I really wanted to, but then I’d have to turn the light off and on like a hundred times while repeating the word “Crayola” or else the Nigerian Prime Minister would die and it would totally be my fault. I don’t have that kind of time tonight and besides, Junichiro Koizumi is probably a pretty nice guy with a lot of living left to do.
Ghastly as gross people make our bathrooms, there is even worse floating around out there.
The other day I was at Wal-Mart during one of my daily pilgrimages and I grabbed what I know as a buggy, but you people probably call a cart. I don’t like using them because they are germy, but because I am building a Diet Pepsi fort, they are a necessity.
The idea of putting my hands where so many other people have had theirs makes me cringe. (For those of you keeping score at home, that’s also reason #475 why I’m not still married to my first husband.)
So I put my hand on the bar to push it and I feel something so gross, even now as I write I am working to suppress my gag reflex.
Snot.
There on MY cart, touching the OCD Chick herself, was so much snot I looked up to be sure aliens weren’t clinging to the ceiling, dripping their snotty alien slime all over Wal-Mart.
First of all, if you are even close to capable of producing that much mucus, you are seriously ill, most definitely contagious and should be in a hospital where medical professionals wear masks and only touch you with tongs.
And second, if some bizarre and unexpected allergic reaction occurs while you are shopping for Red Vines and a shower mat rendering you absolutely incapable of stopping the gale force sneeze that shoots that brand of nasty out of an orifice, NORMAL PEOPLE WOULD CLEAN IT UP.
So here’s what I’m saying. If you are gross, you need to stop going outside your house. Ever.
More importantly, if there is the smallest chance you might be gross, like if your Dad is gross but your Mom isn’t and you aren’t sure if the gross gene was passed onto you, DO NOT procreate. No babies for you. America cannot take that chance.
If you find you are somehow lucky enough to talk a drunken person into being near your private grossness and the potential for fertilization of a gross embryo is even remotely possible, please do the right thing… the American thing… and use a condom. A giant, industrial strength condom.
Which I’m sure I should mention, you should dispose of properly. Oh, and wash your hands after.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~ I miss my friend today. I'm not sure why. It feels like he still comes and goes in my head sort of whenever he wants.
