Know & Tell Friday ~ Kayren's OCD Edition

This is what kind of trouble a wild hair can get me into. I'm blaming this on the two-inch gray one in front that likes to stand up at attention and requires either pulling or some serious smoothing to hide...smoothing as in wet and push in, obviously not as in straighten. I think it has short-people syndrome. So far I've opted not to pull it. I think it's the one that keeps growing back anyway. Guess that's why it's causing me trouble now. Well, Heather and Reese are always so gracious and kind, and they were when I got this wild hair and sent them my funny offering of OCD questions for this week. They've both had difficult weeks so the timing was appropriate.

From the NIMH:

"Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, OCD, is an anxiety disorder and is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsession) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Repetitive behaviors such as handwashing, counting, checking, or cleaning are often performed with the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts or making them go away. Performing these so-called "rituals," however, provides only temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety."

Also from NIMH:

"People with OCD may be plagued by persistent, unwelcome thoughts or images, or by the urgent need to engage in certain rituals. They may be obsessed with germs or dirt, and wash their hands over and over. They may be filled with doubt and feel the need to check things repeatedly."

That was just for all of you who don't get me. On to the Q & A!

1. Do you put the toilet paper on coming over the top or underneath, or does it matter? If someone puts it on wrong do you have to fix it?

I put the toilet paper on coming over the top, and yes it matters. Based on the definitions above, did you really think it didn't? And yes, I will fix it. You know what is even more sick than that, I realized when we lived in New Jersey, which we left eight years ago, that I have to put the toilet paper on the roll with the same hand. Because, you know, I was putting it on with the left one and if felt wrong, so I had to stop and start over and put it on with the right hand, which apparently I've done my whole life. Funny how you never realize things until you do them wrong. Everyone's that way, right? Right? Let me hear you now.

2. Do you wear shoes in the house?

Gross! Do you know what's on those public bathroom floors where your shoes have been? I think the germ fear is part of the OCD issue. Now, that said, we do have some "inside shoes" that we can wear in the house, but my kids like to go barefoot, except for Sparky, who has a knee sock fetish.

3. If something falls out of the dryer when you're folding clothes or putting it in the laundry basket, do you have to rewash it or do you just continue on like nothing happened?

I'm thinking that based on everything people have read so far, they're going to guess my answer before I type it. And I'm not going to disappoint...rewash it!

4. Which side of the bed do you sleep on? What about in a hotel?

It depends on where it faces in the room. I have slept on both sides of the bed, and it can change in every place we live depending on the location of the bed to the bedroom door and the bathroom door, if we have one in the room. I always get to pick my side of the bed first. Isn't Hubby nice? I picked a keeper.

Now in a hotel, when there are two beds, which with kids there always are, I never sleep against the wall and I never sleep by the window. I always sleep on one of the inside positions, but I don't care which bed. I haven't been in a hotel with one bed in so long I don't know where I'd sleep, but I guess it would just depend on how it "looked and felt."

5. Do you do everything in the shower in the same order every time?

This was another freebie. Duh, yes. Wash face, if make-up on wash face again, shampoo hair to finger comb hair, shampoo hair again to scrub scalp well, wash body, wash face again, just in case any dirt from my hair contaminated my perfectly clean face...don't even go there because I know it's sick, but it's the ritual people. The compulsion has to be done to satisfy the obsession. My growing-up family always knew I was out there...now maybe they'll know why.

6. How many times a day do you think you wash your hands?

It depends on if I'm at home or not. When I'm at home it's a lot more, just because of sink availability. I've never tried to put a number on it, but it's probably more than 50 times a day easily. And these are all soap-washing hand-washings. No wonder my hands are so chapped in the winter. And if they were chapped in the humid, not so cold Virginia winters, imagine the dry, colder Michigan winters. Note to self: take stock in Neutrogena.

I wash my hands after the obvious things (bathroom, trash, etc.), after I blow my nose, after I touch the dirty laundry, all the time repeatedly while I'm cooking, after I put mousse in my hair, before I put on my make-up or anything else on my face to make sure my face, mouth, nose, eyes aren't contaminated, after I put make-up on my face, before I clean my glasses, after I clean my glasses, after I check the mail, after I touch store packaging or plastic bags (from refilling something in the house), every time I get home from being out in public or at someone else's house, after I put my shoes on to go out of the house, after I've folded clean laundry (although I don't really know why), repeatedly while cleaning...I could obviously go on and on, but I think you get the picture. I will after I get up from the computer because my hands will "feel" like they need it. Maybe I should have said at least 100 times a day. Maybe even one of these days I will count.

7. What is the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? Does it ever vary?

I go to the bathroom, wash my hands, and brush my teeth. With rare exception for children rudely waking me up to an urgency, no it doesn't vary.

I also have counting/number issues and the "rechecking things" issue. But since Heather and Reese only do seven questions each week, which may mean they have OCD and number issues too, I couldn't put a question about those in there. So maybe I'll blog about those someday if people actually leave comments and seem interested. Otherwise, I guess I'll keep my personal information, which is shrinking amanzingly fast, to my little ol' self.

Go to Kickin' It In Crazyville and see if others are as OCD as me, which I find very unlikely, but I'm slightly hopeful that I'll find some kindred OCD souls. At least we'll find some fun answers! And participate people, you know you want to...

Sir Boom-Boom and Some Books I've Read

Guess I should explain Sir Boom-Boom first. He's the man that lives in the end apartment next to us. He lives alone and appears to be older than Hubby and me. The day after we moved in (boy, he must have been cringing when we pulled in at about 10 p.m. Friday night with four kids in tow) Hubby met him in the driveway. Sir Boom-Boom said that he thought our apartment would never be rented out and that it was always going to be used as the model. Apparently the complex is doing well enough they don't need a model anymore, and apparently that's why it's already furnished, and apparently that's why we're able to rent it short term. Since he's in an end apartment, he previously shared no walls with anyone.

Anywhere from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m., as in midnight, many nights, Sir Boom-Boom starts playing music in his guest room, which shares a wall with our second bedroom, which is the bedroom Hubby and I share since the kids needed the master bedroom so that we could fit two twin air mattresses on the floor along with the queen-sized bed that was already there. And both bedrooms have bathrooms off of them, it's just ours has access from the hall too, but who cares? It's not like we didn't just come from a duplex with one and a half baths. Please! We have two and a half here. We think we're in heaven! I'm digressing again, but if you read my blog often enough, you're used to it.

So back to Sir Boom-Boom, which I'm guessing by now you figured out how he got his name...the bass beat to his music which reverberates through my walls...when I'm trying to sleep...which my white noise maker turned as loud as it goes will not drown out...with cotton stuffed tightly in both ears...with the bathroom fan on...with a dvd in my dvd player turned up a little so as not to wake up Hubby...as the Veggietales would say, "Nothing, Zilch, Nada," does any good. So I read until my eyes drop shut. But nothing of any value mind you, because at that point I'm a little ticked. So I read fiction, because then I can lose myself in the story. I've read a lot of fiction.


First is the second book in "The Cat Who..." series that Lora recommended, "The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern." I mentioned that I had a little trouble getting into the first one in the series, but the second one was going a little smoother. Much quicker and easier read, and I enjoyed it. I had started it when we came up to buy the house in July, but with packing for the move I didn't get to finish it until I got here. By the way, the first one was about art, and since I'm a left-brain math kind of girl, I think that caused some problems in the interpretation.


Next I finished off a series by Catherine Palmer and Gary Chapman, The Four Seasons. The book title is "Winter Turns to Spring," and if this had been the first book, I'm not sure how I would have felt about the series. I had started the series when it was first released because I liked the cover of "It Happens Every Spring," the first book. The first couple of books were definitely my favorites, but I always like to finish a series unless I'm seriously opposed to it. Without spoiling the last book, it had lots of bitterness and marital discord that was dealt with, and although there was resolution, which of course was the purpose of these books (putting Chapman's marital theories into fictional situations), it was still not something I would have normally read as a stand-alone book.


Next I read "The Penguin Who Knew Too Much" by Donna Andrews. I read a minimal amount of non-Christian fiction, only because it's difficult to find something that is "clean" enough and non-offensive. There are a few uses of the "d" word in her books, but just a few throughout, and after having thumbed through some others in the fiction section and seeing multiple words multiple times just on the first couple of pages of some other author's books, this is very acceptable. After all, Andy Griffith used the Biblical name for a donkey on Matlock and sometimes used the "d" word, so I think I can read it a few times in a book and not be scarred for life.

So now that I've digressed again about the language in non-Christian fiction books, this was I believe the eighth by Andrews in her "bird" mystery series. Meg Langslow is the main character that serves as the "Nancy Drew." I've enjoyed these books. There are some rather eccentric characters in Meg's family that you can't help but like. There were a couple of books along the way that I liked less than others, but I think that's common in any series.


After I finished that Andrews book, I happened to find the next installment at Barnes and Noble in hardback on the sale table. It's not out in paperback yet and won't be for a while, and I don't buy them usually unless they are. I made an exception since this was discounted quite a bit. It's called "Cockatiels at Seven" and was probably the only one that I figured out in the middle of the book. I don't know if it was my feelings towards Sir Boom-Boom that was putting me in touch with my inner detective. Regardless, I still enjoyed the book. Again, I think Meg's eccentric family always adds a lot of character to the story.

Lora just recently blogged about a devotional by Sally Clarkson that I'm going to get about motherhood. I need to do some more serious reading along with this mindless fiction. But obviously it's got to be done at a different time than when the music is booming.

Prince For A Day

You know how I mentioned the new furniture that our hard work moving ourselves (mostly) was helping us get? Well, one of the benefits is that Hubby and I will go from a queen-sized bed (that we've had for all 23 years of our married life) to a king-sized bed. Unfortunately, I know just what I want, so it will be impossible to find.

That said, before we moved there was an interesting conversation that took place between Hubby and kiddos one night. One of the kids said something about Mom and Dad getting a king-sized bed when we moved. That prompted Chatty to mention that she'd be getting a queen-sized bed for her new bed (we saved our mattress and box springs in case it ends up being less expensive than getting her brand new in a full-size). Caboose then stated that he was going to be getting a prince-sized bed for his new bed. After some giggles, Hubby explained bed sizing, which really doesn't make any sense after all.

And I'm really not sure at what point Caboose thought someone else took over the queen role in the house anyway...

Talk About Tuesday ~ New House Update

To see how fast things are moving, you can go back and read this post from last week's Talk About Tuesday that shows pictures of the "hole" on July 15, and the second floor almost up on August 2nd.

This picture is from Tuesday, August 5th. There is a guy on the back side right above the garage starting on the roof tiles/shingles.

Here is a picture from yesterday, Monday, August 11th. The roofers are just finishing up. They had to wait for more roofing tiles to be delivered so they didn't get started until 3:00. The inside workers were already gone.

Even though I didn't take any pictures of the inside, they had done a lot of work just on Monday. All the bathtubs were put in (three including our jetted tub), the gas fireplace was put in (nice for the Michigan winters), some wood bracing for the snack bar in the kitchen, and the big puffy venting stuff was all over the place up in the attic area on the unlived in part of the third floor. There were lots of other little things I could tell had been done when I was there that I can't really think of. They had previously put in plumbing pipes, the box for the washing machine hookups (which by the way are not standard; it's standard to have your hose drain into a laundry room sink), drains, air vent rectangular holes in the rooms, the basement stairs, drained the water in the basement, etc. I'll try to take inside pictures next time I'm there. We'll probably be having our pre-drywall walk-through sometime in the next week or so. Exciting stuff happening.

Lara over at The Lazy Organizer did some more excellent painting in her house that she was talking about today. Go visit and see, and check out what others are talking about too.

The Big (Albeit Temporary) Move

Spoiler warning: You may get sick and tired of seeing messy rooms and looking at pictures of boxes before this post is over.

This is our master bedroom in our old military quarters. No, it did not usually look like this. We were trying to pack boxes and get things organized. Yes, organized. Doesn't look a bit like it though. We had just participated in a yard sale with a good friend and sold our chest of drawers and dresser, so we were using the recently emptied toy drawers to hold our clothes, clothes which were not yet in the drawers, thus part of the mess. The second picture is really blurry, but I had to include it to fully illustrate the mess.

This picture is the improved master bedroom with my scrapbooking supplies and some other things packed up. The bookshelves were next. These are only a portion of the books in our home. We are avid readers. We use the library too.
This is the girls' room in the old house. It was absolutely tiny! We had to buy bunk beds for them just for this house. We sold them at the yard sale too. This is the room in some form of chaos. It actually got worse. Hubby and I are in disagreement on that though. Prior to the movers coming (they took 11 boxes and the heaviest furniture - altogether an estimate of about 3,500 lbs.) the areas had to be cleared of boxes and "stuff" for them to get to the things they needed to take. Hubby's version of cleared out and mine were a little different, and his version of how to go about it and mine were very clearly different. He got the kids out of bed (air mattresses) military style at about 6 a.m. and had them running through the house clearing things out of every room and literally throwing it in the girls' room, where the movers would not need to go. Do you know how long it took me to pack the stuff in that room after that? Hubby still thinks it was a smart move.

Remember that this room is chaotic but still prior to the "throw stuff in the room" chaos.

Here we are lining the walls with boxes in that room as it got better.

Here's the boys' room full of boxes. I was standing at the very top of the bunk bed ladder. See the two sports balls in the bottom right corner? They are two of four different globes to a sports lamp that we don't have anymore. I had to make choices at the end on what to get rid of...but more on that in a minute.

Here is the living room during some part of the boxing process:

Here is the truck when Hubby started filling it. It looked like it was plenty big enough at this point and might have some extra room.

My only request during this whole DITY (do-it-yourself move) was that we move our boxes and our washer and dryer. Somewhere about this point of filling the truck Hubby said something about moving our bookshelves. I kept asking about having enough space; he kept saying we had plenty. This was the weekend also, so the movers were still yet to come on Monday, so we had time to decide what we did and didn't want them to take. But once we decided what we didn't want them to take and they drove off, that was it.

Now several days after this I find out that when Hubby said bookshelves what he meant were what really qualify as entertainment unit - three large pieces that house my doll collection (glass doors and shelves), the tv, stereo, scrapbooks, games, movies, and dvds. No books really involved. I assumed he meant bookshelves in our house, of which we have many. And that turned into everything that remotely belonged to the bookshelf family - wire shelving, cubbies, etc. I talked him out of taking the three large pieces (still unaware that these were the only three he meant to take) because of how large and heavy they are, since he would have to move them by himself into our new house and probably up stairs alone.

Somewhere around the time Hubby realized he was running out of room for things, he decided to be funny. This is his version of a shower cap for my dryer. He called me in from another room where I was packing boxes just to see it. He was so proud of himself.

Now this is the 26' Super Mover by U-Haul. It's supposed to move a 4+ bedroom house. Ha! In who's dreams?

Tuesday night the 29th Hubby and I pulled an all-nighter packing, and still weren't done. And for some reason it just didn't look like there was any progress being made. Wednesday morning was when I was made fully aware that we would not have enough room in this truck that was supposed to move a 4+ bedroom house, of which ours was three, and we weren't even moving much furniture. Go figure. I called the smaller U-Haul place right off post and amazingly they had a 6' x 12' trailer available.

Now as nice and new as the truck was (only 5,000 miles and very clean) this trailer was as old as the hills. When I started up my vehicle on Thursday morning to keep the cat air-conditioned when we had to get it out of the house to clear quarters, the battery was dead. The wiring had drained the battery, so every time we stopped on the trip, I had to pull the plug. To top it off, there was a short, so I'd have to jiggle it to make sure the lights were working after I plugged it back in.

Thursday morning, after three and a half hours of sleep, we called and postponed our clearing inspection by two hours just to get the stuff out of the house. From Wednesday morning until we left we also had two good friends that came by to help us, so there were four of us and we just made it. One of these two people was the lady who drove our van, while I drove the other vehicle pulling a trailer (which I was not happy about), and Hubby drove the big truck.

When we cleared quarters our sidewalk was still full of stuff. Since I couldn't find my cameras at this point, as well as most anything important other than my purse, I have no pictures. But I had to start choosing what was most important to me. Hubby's orders. There was not room for everything. After we went and got a 6 x 12 trailer! After I asked him if there was room for bookcases! Which supposedly he didn't really want to take anyway, just those three heavy things which really aren't bookcases, but I think I'm belaboring the point. So my neighbor got two floor lamps and some really nice Sterilite boxes, and the closest donation place got some good stuff too, including my three little Charlie Brown Christmas trees, which I'm still missing. They were under $20 at Wal-Mart a few years ago and I am so hoping they have them again this year. I will really be sad about those if they don't. They are probably the one thing I will really miss.

On the trip the trailer I was pulling was ornery. The brake lines on the front two tires broke. We stayed in a hotel that first night, and so the next morning Hubby used masking tape to tie up the stuff hanging down on one side. A little while later he called me on the phone and had me pull over at the next service area in Pennsylvania because something was hanging down on the other side. Turns out it was just the other side of the same brake line, so he used one of our bungee cords and tied it up. We finally pulled into our apartment close to 10 p.m. It seemed to take a lot longer than it should have.

I don't have pictures of the storage units where our stuff is stored until our house is finished. We get one free month with a one-way truck rental, and then we just pay by the month until we get it out, which will hopefully be two months or less. I don't have pictures because at the time the cameras were still AWOL. But I found a camera and took pictures in the one-car garage that comes with our apartment before we started opening these boxes. All of these boxes won't be opened, but many of them are clothes and school things, or just things we didn't want to put in the storage unit.

This is in the back of the garage on a little ledge.

I had mentioned in a previous post about the large quantity of baseball cards members of my family have. Well, these may look like a lot, but these are only some of them. These don't include any of the books (of which there are at least 20, and I'm being conservative) or any of the individual team boxes, which would completely fill up at least two of those shelves. And these aren't all the boxes like this. But my family members that collect these cards love them and love to look at them and enjoy them. They don't just sit around and collect dust, and they only collect people they love. Buddy even learned to alphabetize and put things in numerical order with baseball cards so when it came to that in homeschooling, I really didn't even have to teach him since I'd already shown him. And where the kids are concerned, they've always picked good people so we've never had to draw the line and tell them they couldn't collect a certain player's cards, because we would if we felt like we should.

Altogether in the three vehicles we moved just shy of 14,000 lbs. That added to the mover guy's estimate of 3,500 lbs. that they took is our weight limit: 17,500 lbs. If we go over, we just don't get reimbursed for all of the weight we had with us, but it would be pretty close because we've never gone over by more than about 500 lbs. Doing most of this move ourselves is what is helping us buy new furniture for our new house. It was a lot of work, and it's not actually over until all our stuff is out of storage and in our new house.

At least there are a couple of months in between.

Kayren Is An Exclamation Point!

Heather and Reese always do fun stuff on their blog, and the latest was a little quiz to figure out what punctuation mark you are. I know, a little strange, but fun nonetheless. You'll have to go over to their blog to see what they are (which is different than me) and you can click at the bottom of my page to go to a separate link and participate yourself. Be sure to leave a comment if you do so I can check you out.

You Are An Exclamation Point

You are a bundle of... well, something. You're often a bundle of joy, passion, or drama. You're loud, brash, and outgoing. If you think it, you say it. Definitely not the quiet type, you really don't keep a lot to yourself. You're lively and inspiring. People love to be around your energy. (But they do secretly worry that you'll spill their secrets without even realizing it.) You excel in: Public speaking You get along best with: the Dash

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

I'm going to have to have Hubby do this now and see if we're compatible. I hope so since we've been married so long. And I do have one gripe...I am an excellent secret keeper, so there are some flaws in this. Other than that, well yes, I'm out there.

OH MY GOSH!

Look how huge it is!

It took two pictures and me standing on the top bar of a cart return thingy to show you.

There were U-Hauls in the parking lot. Not just trailers, but trucks. Two floors of browsing, two girls with me, and about five hours later, and I had some fantastic ideas for my new house.

I have to admit I was extremely hesitant when Hubby told me he put in his retirement paperwork, but he really felt a leading from God. For me it was that unknown, me being an obsessive compulsive planner and all, and of course there had been job security for the past 20 years. Well, finally getting that new furniture I was promised after we didn't have to move around and get our other stuff banged up anymore is looking pretty good right now. I found bedroom furniture for some of the kids, maybe all of them depending on if I pick mine out from there or not, storage units galore for all over the house including bookshelves, and do we need bookshelves. And one of my really big homeschool shelves bit the dust when we were moving it out of the truck and into the storage shed last Saturday, so it looks like I'll have to have new storage for my homeschool area. Shucks! I needed more anyway, and now it will just have to match.

What thrills me more than anything is that Sparky picked out furniture she likes. She is very picky. She dislikes more than she likes and she likes very little. And if she finds something she likes, she usually doesn't like pieces that match. That's how we started. She found a dresser, but she really didn't like the bed that went with it, and there were no other beds that would match. We finally saw a bed set up that I had shown her (that she said she didn't like) in a room setting and she liked it. The whole thing! She just needed the visual. I guess she's unable to imagine what something will look like put together and I need to realize that. It's hard for me sometimes to adjust when my children's brains work differently than mine, especially when I'm not even aware of it. Digression aside, Sparky made a good choice.

Have a blessed weekend everyone!