The Great Table Cloth Incident

Over the years, I have noticed that as I get tired and stressed, I get more and more particular. Gradually (sometimes not so gradually) that particular-ness morphs into "Oh my gosh, you've lost your mind and gone stark, raving mad" OCD. Everything bothers me at that point - the handle on my coffee mug isn't exactly parallel with the edge of my desk, the phone cord is curling around itself rather than sitting straight, no clothes feel like they fit, tags that I've previously removed still manage to impose a phantom itchiness...you get the idea. The down side is that, most of the time, I can do very little to control the need to fix things that are bothering me, that's the only way they stop bothering me. The good side? I have learned to recognize the symptoms (before they're inherently obvious to everyone) and give fair warning to people who might be in my way that I'm dealing with a minor crisis and that I'm going to need a little extra understanding and leeway. Well that, and I usually emerge on the other side of these episodes with an amazingly clean house.

The ability to recognize and warn came about (through sheer necessity) after the table cloth incident. It's a day that, in the Sleepy household, will go down in infamy.

When we got married, we purchased for $100 a table and four chairs from Ikea. It's been a great little table set and is still our kitchen table to this day. Since, for the first seven or so years, it was our only dining table, I purchased some fancier table cloths to dress it up a little now and then. One of those was a lovely, emerald green table cloth with satin stripes of varying thickness. It gave the little round table a lovely, fancy look and really brightened up the room it was in. I think it was probably our favorite table cloth, if one bothers to spend time having a favorite table cloth.

After we moved here and I got my first of many Very Stressful Jobs at Companies With No Future headed up by Megalomaniac Morons, I began to notice the above OCD tendencies. Usually these were precipitated by multiple 12 - 15 hour days in a row, weekends in the office, and meetings where virtually every suggestion I made was shot down with the requisite public humiliation. (As a side note, if I ever make a recommendation about what job you should take - do the exact opposite. When it comes to career advice, I suck. Unfortunately for me, even trying to take this career advice ends up poorly because the second-guessing inevitably leads me to the next Very Stressful Job at a Company With No Future headed up by a Megalomaniac Moron.)

Thusly, it was after a few weeks of stress when Tim, my loving and wonderful husband, decided to help me out and try to make the world a better place for me that he would clean the house. It was a beautiful, admirable effort. But you see, he put the table cloth on crooked.

You remember those satiny stripes I mentioned? The ones that are really almost imperceptible? Well, to me it was inherently obvious that said stripes should be exactly parallel with the entry hallway of the house. Tim, if you can believe it, put the stripes perpendicular to the hallway. Crazy, I know. The horror was unimaginable.

I walked in from the garage, my eyes fell on the table cloth and I burst into tears. And then spent several moment in utter, hysterical tears (and not hysterical in a good way), unable to explain what poor Tim had done wrong. He was beside himself, wondering if I was hurt, what the problem was. But the problem was that I was caught in the throes of OCD so powerful that I seriously could not think about anything other than the fact that the table cloth was on wrong. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. All I could do was fight the urge to rage. It was ugly. Tim deserves a medal.

So last night when I was putting away the stuff from my trip, my eyes fell on the toothpaste that Tim purchased and it was exactly then that I realized that I had slipped perilously close to the edge yet again. You see, when I left I took the almost empty tube of toothpaste (because there was just enough to get me through the weekend and even then it might be a close call) with instructions for Tim to grab another tube or two since it was easier for him (being home, and all). And he did. We have toothpaste. It's cinnamon flavored. Crazy, I know. The horror was unimaginable. Tim's explanation? He just thought he'd give it a try, you know, mix it up a little. My response? Don't you know you don't mess with toothpaste!?

I thought I was doing better, it's been a long time since I've felt this out of control - but, well, it's just toothpaste. And I can type that, but my stomach clenches when I think about the fact that there's toothpaste that makes pink foam when you brush your teeth sitting in my house. So with Tim's folks arriving tomorrow, maybe it's time to go see about refilling my medication.