HI my name is Tammy, and I am an OCD Dropout

Hi. My name is Tammy, and I had OCD.

At one time, many people honestly did not know I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I hid it, or tried at least.

I had Tupperware stacked high in half my kitchen, each container labeled with neatly typed tags. Beans. Elbows. Rice. Yeast. Onion soup mix. Even Kool-Aid. Everything tucked away just so. The canned goods were another story altogether. Categorized by food group, then family, then variety, then size, down to the exact brand, labels facing perfectly forward. Of course.

Immaculate. That was me.

You may not have noticed that I always rinsed my personal dish, cup, or mug before serving myself food. I knew it was clean. I washed it. But I had to. And it had to be that mug. Not those over there. They did not feel right in my hand or on my lips. Plastic or acrylic cups, especially with dairy, were absolutely not allowed. Glasses required a straw. A bendy one. But never in milk, because plastic and milk do not belong together. Yes, I am aware milk comes out of a plastic jug. Duh.

Ice splashing up my nose? Instant horror. Forks could not feel thin or hollow. They had to feel solid and weighted just right. I had one fork. My fork. The kids all knew. Tongs had to line up perfectly. My silverware drawer was a thing of beauty. Truly enviable.

Paper plates, Styrofoam cups, disposable utensils? Never the top one, even when they were upside down. Plastic utensils got washed anyway.

Then there were the other oddities: socks, oral hygiene, bedding, bathtubs, towels, candle wax, stationery supplies, and yes, even hotdogs. Fingerprints? That is a phobia, not OCD, but we will not go there.

We are not even going to discuss germs and cleaning. or locks and appliances. 

And then, oddly enough, I dropped out. Cold turkey.

The year I divorced, got pregnant, and was diagnosed with cancer all at once, something changed. I got tired. Really tired. Now I am a full-time working, exhausted mom to five full-time kids and one part-time stepdaughter. I simply do not have the energy for OCD anymore.

If you watch closely, you may still catch a glimpse. I still have secrets. I tell you about them all the time. You just do not notice. Laugh out loud.

So why am I telling you all this?

Number one. We finally got a new, to us, refrigerator. Remind me to tell you about the landlord later. I drank a glass of milk tonight without rewashing the glass.

Number two. I took an uninterrupted bath. Uninterrupted. Mom of six. I scrubbed the tub for an hour first, and yes, I will do it again tomorrow even if no one touches it. I am glad I got that out of my system. Please do not tell anyone. It is embarrassing.

So here we are.

Hi. My name is Tammy, and I am an OCD dropout.

Random Facts 5

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.
The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
The word racecar and kayak are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left.
There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
You are more likely to be killed by a Champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
You share your birthday with at least nine million other people in the world.

Quote

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.

~Doug Larson

Life Quote

"Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is.The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."

~ Virginia Satir ~

Random Facts 4

Fascinating (and Totally Random) Facts You Probably Didn’t Know

• Believe it or not, more people are killed by donkeys each year than in plane crashes.

• There’s no word in the English language that rhymes with “month.”

• Nutmeg is deadly if injected directly into the bloodstream.

• On average, people fear spiders more than death itself.

• One reason marijuana became illegal? Cotton growers in the 1930s saw hemp as competition and lobbied against it.

• Only one person in two billion will live to see their 116th birthday.

• Your eyes stay the same size from birth, but your nose and ears never stop growing.

• Right-handed people, on average, live nine years longer than left-handed folks.

• Shakespeare invented words like “assassination” and “bump.”

• Some lions mate over 50 times a day.

• Starfish don’t have brains.

• “Stewardesses” is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

• Drunk ants always fall on their right side.

• The average person unknowingly eats eight spiders in their lifetime—while asleep.

• Catfish have over 27,000 taste buds.

• The Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise liner moves just six inches for every gallon of diesel it burns.

Crazy, right? The world is full of bizarre, mind-bending facts that make you see everyday life in a whole new way.