Garbage Delight

So last night was garbage take-out night.  Special worry because I also had to take garbage from the basement. That can had towels in it that had acquired fuzzy black spots (from hanging wet over my laundry basket for days). In my book that was mold so this bag needed extra care. All day I thot about how to get it out of the house , finally deciding that if i took it out of the can, put it into another garbage bag upside down then it would be good enuf. I did that, wiped down that can and the walls and floor around it  Because the outside can was already full and it was rainy and supposed to be raining the next few days I just put the bag on the ground hoping the rain would keep the crows/ ravens away.  By this time tho i was tired. Showering took 45 min. But as i was drying off I (or rather OCD) decided that the towel should go into the laundry 'in case' some dirt was still left on me- how that could be after 40 minutes only OCD can say -but i bought into it, instead of telling ocd brain to shut up. So i threw the towel onto the laundry pile which then blasted a puff of air at me. This meant that i should wash my arms - 'just in case' - OCD said. Obediently, and without thinking, i went to do it- i was tired and so just wanted to get done- but then soap bubbles started coming out of the sink hole ( is there mold down that hole?) and i had had it. Anxiety went sky-hi. I moved to another sink, after washing down the original soap pump and sink handle, and tried again to wash my arms 'properly'. Since the kitchen sink has no soap-bubble drain hole near the top, i managed to get washed and dressed in my pj's by 8:40. i was tired. It was now over 2 hours since i started. Ocd is sooo exhausting. I was in bed by 9:15 reading a book to my 5 year-old daughter.   Thinking about how to do the garbage 'right' sure sucks!!!

Since i went to bed so early, i figured i better get up at a decent time of day. Unfortunately, my counsellor doesn't think 10:30 meets that qualification. So i was up at before 7:30, giving my daughter breakfast and getting her ready for school. Everything's fine? Nope, saw my husband putting some garbage into the empty milk box we have on the counter to scrape left-over oatmeal into from daughter's bowl, so it doesn't clog the sink. From my angle it looked like he TOUCHED the box. "Eww" screached OCD into my head. I retorted with, He'll be upset and tell me that he did NOT touch anything, so i'll ignore it.' 'Uh, huh' says ocd. They both leave and i watch them thru the window ( what else am i supposed to do at this time of the night?). So i saw the neighbors come out of their house. The mom has a garbage bag in her hand and the daughter comes across the street to the bus stop WHERE MY FAMILY IS STANDING. ' See that? screams OCD,' i hope she doesn't touch her". Mom puts the garbage in a can and goes back in the house. "Ug, now their door knob is dirty" What if dear daughter wants to go play there? Or worse, their daughter comes over here??" And then not-so-dear husband-with-the-dirty-hands goes in my car and into my trunk. OCD now has a major temper tantrum in my head because my car was clean and safe for me to use. Then hubby blythely gets into his car and drives off, leaving me dealing with OCD -brain all by myself.

And 10 or so minutes after everyone left, i heard a crow squack.  Sure enuf, paper towels were all over the place.  I should have just put it on top of the other bag in the can last night.However,I was too anxiety ridden or something to remember that crows, unlike hummingbirds, can't hover in the air to poke holes into the sides of a bag sitting on top of a garbage can with a lid over it.   So guess who gets to deal with more yuk garbage?? blech. But not yet.
So do i run out and wash my car door handle and the trunk pull etc?  Couldn't call hubby for another 20 minutes until he actually arrives at work. I decided to sit with it and do nothing, and see how long that lasted. (One of Jeff Schwartz' ideas from Brain Lock.) I read a book while i waited and the urge to scream, call hubby etc. decreased. 2 hrs later  i realized the feelings had gone down a lot. But again i'm left feeling exhausted. So it's not a happy win. I did do better than last night.

I took a mental holiday.

I avoided all things ocd as much as i could- except taking my daily meds.  I didn't feel like blogging, or writing much in my journal.  I just wanted a vacation from ocd.  Not that ocd took a vacation from me.  I didn't want to THINK about it, try to figure it out or wonder why it wasn't working.  So i avoided this blog and everyone else's.  Sorry!

School has started and dd is back to her routine... except of course going to bed.  Still fights that one all the way   until she is finally in bed and we start reading.  Then she's happy again. 

Back to ocd.  I was doing ok in July; maybe because i spent a lot of it swimming at the beach (no ocd about that at all) with dd as she had swim lessons.

 And i went kayaking which was ok until one night when all the kayaks outside the boathouse were already taken and i was left with a dusty one on the floor right beside a garbage bag. So automatically we have a problem.  I don't like touching garbage bags because they have, you know, GARBAGE in them.  No, i didn't run away, but mentally tried to figure out what to do.  Also then as the canoe was dirty Mice was the next logical thot (for me).  Even tho the coach said, NO MICE in the boathouse,.So  every time i went after that day i still had to get thots of garbage and mice out of my mind.  So now a fun exercise  sport became an exercise in fighting ocd thots.. Naturally my desire to go decreased. And as it was often cloudy or actually rainy, i didnt go as much as i did in july.  Also we went camping for a week but that was cold and rainy too. 

 Our shower curtain was dirty and gungy so i finally decided to get rid of it.  Sounds easy?  ha!  not with ocd.  I wore 2 bags on my hands to pull the curtain down, then used one bag of those grocery bags to put it in.  i took it outside to the garbage bag. Try getting a bag into a garbage bag using only 1 hand. Then i had to put the garbage bag into the garbage can without getting the can contaminated by shower mold.   only that didn't work out so well.  i guess i didn't think it thru enuf or stuff just happened.  Fortunately it rained that night so in my mind all the moldy contamination on the outside of the garbage can got washed clean.  Of course that didn't make the garbage can clean enuf to touch without washing hands.  Just not extra dirty.  Because the garbage man touches it with his gloves, after touching other garbage.  So far he hasn't dumped the whole can in the truck ( i don't think) but i have to assume that one day he will.

I never had this problem with shower curtains/ bathroom mildew before this   ocd hit around the time of dd 's birth.  Once upon a time i could  put it in the washing machine.   Now that  seems way to gross to consider doing. 

Knowing i didn't used to be this paranoid gives me hope that one day i can go back to that state of mind.  It is just such a fight.  Continually. Even when i do the thing i still have a constant feeling of dread, that stays for a long time, til i forget why it was there in the first place.  Sometimes i get a feeling of relief and the dread goes away but often it just builds up in the back of my body and i just live with it there.  Draining my energy.

Maybe that is why i sleep for as long as i can in the morning.

 Do any of you have a hard time getting up, even if you haven't had a hard time falling asleep ( not due to insomnia, )?  I can sleep fo r10 hours and still get up tired and groggy.  I'm trying to work on getting up and staying up in the morning.  Or is that a whole different problem? 

Now i will go back to reading and responding to all your blogs. 
I hope you all had a great summer.  DD and i found some funny books to read together ( the Junie B. Jones series). She is five and i love reading to her.  And we had fun playing together in the water. Our 21 yr old came home from university for a few weeks.  Usually that would also be a time of stress for me as i'd have to make sure he washed his hands when he was 'supposed' to.  This year i have learned to NOT have to wash hands just because i came in the door from shopping etc.  So it's been more like the family's all together again, not 'here's another person to moniter'.  So that was good.

Our Muggle World of OCD and Garbage.

I've been on a bit of a vacation / hiatus lately.  My daughter has swimming lessons in the local lake and so we've been there a lot.  We play together and while she has her lesson, I exercise.  Also I've been learning how to kayak.  I've gained a lot of weight the past 4 or 5 years.  Probably due to the OCD.  What else can you do when your life has been hyjacked by a weird illness? Plus with my husband's new job, we moved 5 hours north.  We knew no one here and have no relatives anywhere close.  However now that he was out of school, there was more money.  So I felt it was just fine to have donuts regularily, rather than once every few weeks.  Ditto for chips.  Chocolate became a food group while pregnant and this 'craving' didn't leave.  I indulged in it all.  Also I  could eat more at a sitting before I felt full.  I  finally checked the web for clomipramine side effects and lo and behold, weight gain was on the list.  So between the pills and my new inablility to say 'no' to junk food, my weight skyrocketed.  So am now trying to lose it.  But that's not what i want to talk about today. 

A week or so after my last post we went on a mini vacation up north.  Just before we left i started feeling anxious.  Not sure why, but it was enuf to make me take 2 clomipramine pills the night before  hoping it would cut back some of the anxiety.  I made a deliberate decision to only take enuf meds with me for 1 pill a night rather than increasing the dose  because I wanted to see how I 'd do in a strange new environment.   ( i used to take 4 pills a night, but have been cutting back since March or so. I'm down to 1 pill a night so increasing the dose would not be a problem.  It's been my choice to reduce the meds.)

The trip seemed full of OCD.  I freaked when I saw some black stuff on the chrome in the bathroom. My mind jumped to MOLD.  YUK.   I also couldn't touch the shower stalls or would have to rewash.  Ditto for touching any sink counter. (That's a problem i also have at home.)  At the train station on the return trip home a lady dumped over the garbage can with her backpack and then picked it up.  (Naturally.  Only because I was there!!!) She didn't go to wash her hands.  She then got into the same car as we did. Ahead of us.  AAARG.  Why not?

Besides making my trip very anxious, with tons of emotions running thru my head what did i do?

 I had a bath and even had the water go over the blackened chrome.  I tried to ignore it.  I touched things after my bath.  They then became 'contaminated' Even tho the next day my husband TOLD me that the black stuff in the tub was just the worn off chrome, i still couldn't let go of the fear it was mold.  So much for trying to ignore my ocd brain.  At the train station I wouldn't go out the same door as the lady did (luckily there were 2) but then she went into 'our' compartment.  I didn't touch the railing she touched to get onto the train, but i touched the door to the compartment because by this time i was able to tell myself that it was only the CAN she touched.  So it was probably ok.  I didn't wash my hands and didn't feel dirty at all thru the whole train ride.  YEAH!

I hate having to live my life backwards.  A few days after an  OCD event, when the emotions have calmed down I can look back and say "I had a good time."

But there were some things I learned from that trip:  I don't add new ocd problems and i don't re-add ocd  issues once i've conquered them.  I only had problems with the same stuff i have problems with here at home. It's the mold, the sink/ shower ritual i've created, mice and the garbage. 

Since i've been working on the garbage problem I've had lots of 'opportunities' to practice and notice my weaknesses.  OK, so i can now drop something in a can without having to wash my hands. (Hey that's a big one, earlier on this OCD journey I couldn't stand to be closer than 2 or so feet from the top of a can of open garbage so the 'splash' into the can wouldn't come back up at me.  Throwing things at an angle into a can was also a practice of mine so i'd be more than the requisite 2 feet away from the opening.) But can i stand a garbage can being dumped over and then touched?  Apparently i can.  Check.     

   Don't ask me to actually push open a lid with my hands without washing afterwards.

Monday night I went to the rowing club to kayak.  The kayaks that were up on a cart were all taken, so the instructor said to take a blue one, sitting on the ground with a garbage bag at it's bow.  I didn't like the idea ( I'd already been to the washroom to wash off the key i'd dropped on the floor in case there were mice in the building.) but was too shy/ stunned/ embarassed to say no, i want one without garbage.  I DID ask if there were mice in the dusty kayak, and he said no (It didn't look used much to me. So what does that lead to in my head, but to mice in the kayak.).

 My husband took the front end by the garbage bag and hauled it to the lake.  I did go out in it.  On my return i asked the coach what was in the garbage bag that she shoved the kayak beside- in case it was just a bag of storage.  She said it was wrap used that weekend when they took the kayaks to a competition or something.  Unfortunately that still didn't calm my ocd brain down.

 And then i found out that my husband HAD NOT washed his hands after touching the bow of the kayak NEAR the black bag.  He had driven home. So now the car was contaminated as well as the door to the garage and anything else he touched before he decided to wash his hands.  That meant that when he went to work the next day, after touching the steering wheel, the office would be contaminated too.  I was in a dither all Tuesday and asked him to re-ask another coach what was in the bag.  He came home from that evening from boating and affermed it WAS a garbage bag.  Don't they have a designated garbage corner?  That's odd.

 And i don't see my counsellor for 2 weeks soI get to figure this all out for myself.  Now it still could be the kayak wrap, as i'm sure that's a one-time use of the plastic.

 How can i go out and do things?  Is this a NORMAL way to treat garbage?  Can i get over this at all? Would more pills help?

  I tried really hard today to not think of the line of contamination- to just tell the ocd to 'SHUT UP'.  It's not in the prescribed CBT tool kit, but seems to work for me when I run out of better ideas.  It just takes longer, and more continuous monitering of my head to make sure I don't run away with my ocd thots again. 

 Why can't we live in a wizarding world where with a flick of the wand all garbage would be wisked away??????