OCD...you can't catch me...

A while back I went down to Rush to participate in a study of the genetics of depression. It was an interesting experience...made moreso because my interviewer had gone to college down at Northeast Missouri State at the same time I did...and knew a bunch of the same people.

It was an interview...a blood test...and a questionaire. All in all about three hours of my life...hopefully to make a difference in someone else's.

My Grandmother...she had a lot of stuff going on. Depression, schizophrenia...probably actually suffered from Bipolar 1...but when we put her in the nursing home...at the forefront was OCD.

My grandmother was a compulsive hoarder.

I know I've told friends about the whole process of putting my grandmother into the hospital. Cleaning her apartment was a cross between an archeological dig and a superfund environmental remediation. Among other things...many, many other things...she hoarded her garbage. Food garbage. There were at least four years of take out containers from the local corner diner stacked up in her kitchen...and because she lived in a vintage Chicago multi-union apartment building that meant.

Cockroaches. Big time. Not one here and one there...it was Stephen King's Creepshow in proportion. The floor was sticky and crunchy and covered in a brown sort of "dirt" that was actually the rotted casings of what was probably six to eight years of dead cockroaches. In some places...over an inch thick.

The smell...well...anyone who has ever lived in the city knows what roach smell smells like. It's kind of a weird stale musty smell...produced by a combination of roach poop, roach oil and roach vomit.

Mmmmmm....

And if you do know...imagine it amplified to the same level as dead skunk at the side of the road. The smell burned in my nostrils...and the only thing that made it go away was rubbing Vicks on my upper lip. A trick I learned from some sort of crime detective mystery novel...used to mask the smell of rotting flesh. And I pulled my socks up over my jeans...rubber banded them to my legs...and added tape for good measure. Kept my hair under a shower cap. Really...it was so nasty that it was just me and Mom and Tim working on it because I couldn't possibly ask a friend or another family member to help with that. It was the kind of horror you would never invite someone else into knowingly.

The day before we went in to start cleaning...Mom and I went over with a couple of industrial strength roach foggers. That was the creepiest...because there was this sort of crinkle noise in the room from all of the moving insect life. Like leaves or papers moving in a mild wind. We plunked two bombs on the kitchen counter...and hauled ass.

And the next day...we came to clean and sort. At first...my mother wanted to look through every bag of garbage...but the green maggot filled trays in the first couple of bags changed her mind...so everything in the kitchen that was already bagged as garbage went out as-is. At least my Grandmother was nice enough to bag her garbage...

It took over three weeks...for a 700 square foot apartment.

So if anyone wants to know why clutter and junk and dust and dirt bothers me so much. Why seeing one cockroach in my house will send me into a nervous frenzy of cleaning...that's why. Because I didn't need a study and an interview to tell me that SOMETHING runs in the family besides thick calves and broad shoulders.

The compulsive hoarding cases you see on television now that Oprah has gotten interested in the subject...and it's on TLC's "Clean Sweep" and such...and that old ladies with 70 dogs make the news headlines...it seems commonplace.

God I hope not...

I had a funny thing happen at the beginning of the month. I keep tossing around the idea of becomming a professional home organizer...along with the idea of becoming a dog groomer...or robbing a bank and moving to my own island in the Carribean...anyway...

I bought a copy of Peter Walsh's book..."It's All Too Much" on the suggestion of a friend...and was a little disappointed that there were sections in there for organizing your kids...but not your pets. And my dog has a ton of crap.

So I jotted down a few ideas...found Peter Walsh's website...and sent them off thinking..."Hmmm...i'll get added to some sort of automated mailing list..."

Nope. I got a phone call. "Hi...this is Peter Walsh..." on my voicemail...in his cute Australian accent and everything. He wanted to use my e-mail for his June newsletter...and I was like..."Hell yeah!..."

So...later on in the day...he called back. While I was at my desk. We commiserated for a few seconds on both being employed in anal retentive type A personality jobs...and I mentioned that plenty of my friends thought I should become a home organizer...

He said something to the effect: "...that it LOOKS cool until you spend two weeks wading through someone's floor to ceiling full-o-crap-garage...."

Yeah...I know what that looks...smells like...and no thank you. Because for every five people who have every Prescious Moments figurine in the world taking up every square inch of their home...there's someone like my Grandmother...who is genuinely mentally ill...who can't let go of foam take-out containers because without them...she'll lose her sense of self.

Bark...

My dog barks when I'm not home. He barks when we leave. It's separation anxiety pure and simple.

Thing is...every time I leave I feel like barking too. I mean...I go out the door to work and 99.9% of me is screaming..."GO BACK AND PET THE DOG!"

This wouldn't be so bad except I've been getting the Nellie report every morning. Monday: Your dog is barking...could you do somethine? Tuesday: Still barking...how about shutting your windows? Wednesday: Still barking...I can hear him through your window fan. Thursday: Still barking...ever thought of one of those anti-bark collars?

Friday...I kind of feel like recording 30 minutes of my dog barking...and hanging one of my stereo speakers out the window. I think tonight is gonna be PUNK ROCK MUSIC NIGHT! I'm gonna pull out all of my Black Flag and The Misfits and she can listen to "I Ain't No Goddamn Son of a Bitch" turned up all the way to eleven.

I know all of the techniques for teaching my dog not to bark. Thing is...I'd just rather be home than teach him not to bark when I'm away...

So...today I'll shop online for smarter dog toys...and tomorrow I'll talk to the dog trainers at animalsense.com where I take classes about ways to stop the barking. But the real way is for me to JUST IGNORE IT. No yelling...because then whenever he barks he'll get to hear Mommy yell at him which sounds like..."Blah, Booiiah...Rerun!!" to him.

It's stress....anxiety. I mean I took two months off of work to get my head back together and work on getting my own tired ass outof bed to work on time and I have some retired woman who want's to sleep in complaining about my barking dog.

GET A JOB. BUY EARPLUGS. Better yet...why don't I just drop him off at your place every morning and you can entertain him for the day?

Really...sometimes...I really like Nellie. Because I appreciate busybodyness. Sometimes...I want to bury her head first in the front courtyard.

But really...I feel that way about everyone from time to time.