I have an OCD family. It suits accountants to be a little OCD. My dad and I empty out a bag of chips and eat the less than perfect ones first, the whole ones second and the folded ones last. I married an OCD man. In the past few years, this has slowly but surely made leaving the house and excruciating process. TP's Dad is a pilot for FEDEx. For as long as TP had done stuff with his Dad, they have checked and rechecked. They turn off all possible options when exiting a vehicle. It pays to be meticulous when you are a pilot. It does not pay to be that way when we are already 5 minutes late leaving the house. And it makes me seriously insane.
TP has to check the front door to make sure it is locked. This normally involves putting the key in and locking and unlocking it while he is on eye level with the dead bolt. Then he grips the doorknob in a very particular way and turns and pulls on it a couple of times. Sometimes he even goes through the whole procedure again. He has to walk in the hallway and re-close the doors to the bedrooms. He has to check the temperature on the thermostat to make sure he has changed it from the overnight temperature. He has to go in the kitchen and point and say aloud that the stove, oven, and toaster are not on and going to burn down the house. (If you only know how infrequently those items got turned on, you would understand how utterly ridiculous this really is.)
We have sliding glass doors that open to the deck out of our dining room and Mr. Cheek's room. Since we put blackout drapes and curtains over the doors in Mr. Cheeks' room, we rarely use that door unless we close the gate to leave without dogs trying to get out. TP has to lock the sliding glass door out of the dining room and then tug on it several times. He also tugs on the door that gets opened maybe three times a month. We haven't even made it off the DECK YET.
When we get to the gate in the fence, TP has to sometimes open and close the latch three times and then grasp the top part and shake it several times. We finally make it to the car. After backing out, we have to stop and count off and name the dogs who are inevitably peeking out between the blinds.
This drives me out of my ever lovin' mind. I constantly harangue him for the gate touching and door pulling, and checking of the oven that has not been turned on since last month. I'm ready to go. Not sit in the alley and count the damn dogs.
He has gotten better about some of the checking because I told him I has going to tie him up and take him to the crazy doctor for medicine if he touched the gate latch one more time or locked and unlocked the front door again.
I may count every step I take, but I'm not a checker. I come home at lunch every day to eat since I am only seven minutes form the office. It gives the pups a chance to run around and play and it's cheap for me.
Like every other day, I came home and had lunch. Some very delicious homemade chicken salad that my mother brought over last night. I surfed around the Internets some, drank a Diet Dr. Pepper, and let the dogs in when they scratched on the door. I left, locked the door and went back to work for the rest of the afternoon.
TP had to babysit this evening, so I was going to get Mr. Cheeks from daycare and TP was coming home to feed the dogs before he left.
My cellphone rang at 4:55. It was TP. He asked, "guess who met me at the gate today?" My first thought was Floyd,* but I decided to play along and said, "Who?"
I thought I had let all of the dogs back in when I left to go back to work. I left Pete outside all afternoon by himself. In the heat. Without any water. Jax and Eleanor were very happy to see him when TP opened the door. He probably had a fun time chasing squirrels and birds and barking and hopping around. From now on? I will be a little more checky when I leave. Maybe a little dog counting wouldn't be so bad.
He doesn't look and worse for the wear, does he?
EDITED TO ADD: If you really think you might be OCD, which I am making a semi-joke about, but can be a serious debilitating disorder, you can go here. And here and here for a test.
*I will tell the story of Floyd, the crazy pooping man, at some later date.
