I’m not what you would consider an OCD type person. I don’t really obsess over things like germs and cleanliness. My house stays picked up but I don’t worry myself with dusting every 20 minutes, in fact, dust bunnies feel quite welcome in my home. And my yard! Oh my poor, poor yard. I currently have two lawn mowers sitting in my back yard and neither one of them seems to be working, therefore my yard currently looks (and sounds) like something straight out of the Amazon.
I promise I’m not telling you all this to make you think that I’m some sort of slob, I don’t think you would be disgusted if you came to my house, as long as you keep in mind that I have THREE inside dogs and though I love them dearly, dogs are not always the easiest creatures to keep clean. Their constant shedding of fur alone is enough to throw an OCD person into convulsive fits. But I am bringing all of this stuff up for a reason.
See, this morning I realized that I have developed a rather unhealthy obsession. Let me start by telling you that I am an extremely punctual individual, one of the things I hate more than anything in the world is to be rushed. Because of my extreme repugnance for being rushed and having to hurry to get somewhere, I have developed a keen sense of time management.
I really don’t know how I do it but I like to think I have a pretty darn good knack for knowing how long it might take to get from one point to another. Keeping that in mind, I always give myself at least a 15 minute cushion. This cushion has turned into more of an obsession apparently and I didn’t actually realize the problem until this morning.
Just like every other morning, I woke up about 30 minutes before the alarm actually went off. I usually lay there for about 20 minutes and get up before the dumb thing even starts screaming at me however, every morning, rather than turn the thing off, I get up and start getting ready and always have to stop halfway through because my phone starts yelling at me to wake up. Every morning I curse myself for not turning it off when I get out of bed yet I have not learned my lesson from this. Anyways, this morning, knowing that I had to get gas on the way in, I decided to roll out of bed as soon as I woke up.
It really doesn’t take me all that long to get ready in the morning, in fact the longest part of my day is convincing my dogs that it’s going to be a beautiful day and that they are happy to spend it outside, instead of inside destroying my home one piece at a time. (My dogs really aren’t that bad, just the ones named Winston.) So I got ready and out of the house before the alarm went off.
I was quite proud about this feat, and that’s when the idea for this blog hit me. I seem to be getting up earlier and earlier these days, regardless of what time I go to bed. Not necessarily because I feel that I’ve gotten an ample amount of sleep, but because of this new obsession. The problem is- I try to get to work as early as I possibly can, and there’s really no good explanation for it other than me just being a nutcase.
I was pretty zoned out as I pulled into the gas station, all of these thoughts running through my head about why it is that I’m so darn worried about being late and why it bugs me as bad as it does to ever be in a hurry. As I pulled in the alarm, that I once again forgot to turn off, decided to feverishly scream at me to get my butt out of bed. Since I was off in my own little world, the noise scared the crap out of me and I accidentally honked the horn on my car.
You know how any time that you do something embarrassing, you immediately look around to make sure no one saw you? You can be on the top of the most remote Himalayan mountain, high enough that birds don’t dare join you, and you do something stupid, and you start looking around to make sure no one saw it. Well, that’s what I did this morning after honking my horn only I wasn’t as lucky as the poor sap at the top of the Himalayas. I looked to my left just in time to see that the police officer in the bay next to me had spilled coffee all over the front of his shirt because my honking of the horn had caught him off guard. Who can blame him? How many people do you honk at at 5 in the morning?
After disarming the wretched alarm clock and apologizing to Officer Reynolds, I realized that this trip to the gas station was taking far too long and was throwing me off schedule. Thus, if I wasted too much more time, I would be rushing and we’ve already established that I don’t do well under that sort of pressure. So I jumped back in my car and proceeded on my journey.
It had begun to sprinkle, not a heavy rain or anything, something between a light sprinkle and thick mist, just enough to coat the windshield with water. My immediate thought was “Seriously? I checked the weather this morning and there was no mention of rain…my poor dogs”. My sympathy for my dogs ended quickly however because it was at this point that I remembered that I still have that brand new windshield wiper flopping around in the backseat of my car. It never has been installed because of the extreme difficulty that is known as windshield wiper installation. I have already blogged about this traumatic experience and I urge those of you who haven’t read it, to do so, look, I’m even being nice and adding a link to it…click here! Do it! NOW!!!
So as I’m desperately peering through the only inch of windshield that hasn’t been streaked by the horrible wiper, my mind turns back to the task at hand. It doesn’t help that I am catching every single light on my way to the highway, and these lights last FOREVER.
I’ve finally hit the highway, the mist/rain has finally subsided and I can see normally. Now, as I’m praying for no accidents or traffic, the traffic report comes on the radio and low and behold, traffic is being reported on my route. I sigh and pray that this is another case of inaccurate traffic reporting which happens quite often. The problem with the local traffic is that I live in a metroplex that is made up of two fairly large cities. I live on the Fort Worth side which is considerably smaller than Dallas, and most of the radio and TV stations are ran out of Dallas. This means that Dallas seems to get better attention and there always seems to be a lag in reports on the Fort Worth side. Luckily for me this morning, this was the case and the accident reported had already been cleared by the time I got there.
Now I’m racing down the highway, mind you, I’m about 20 minutes ahead of schedule at this point but that isn’t slowing me down one bit; I’m determined that I’m getting to work in record time today!
Pulling into the parking lot brings to mind the realization that may be the true reason behind my obsession. Thankfully, I’ve been out in the real world long enough to know that I’m not alone on this one.
Anytime that you have a workplace, school, anywhere that the same people go to daily, and you don’t have reserved parking you always have these little wars going on behind the scenes. People are viciously territorial of “their” parking spot.
I’m not as bad as some people; I do at least have alternate spaces that I will settle for. I have three, to be exact. If choice one is taken, I move on to two and then three. In the even that all of my spots are already filled by a car, it is my duty to simply “remove” said car any way that I see fit, which isn’t always pretty for the vehicles involved. Despite the fact that I have alternates, I still get a little angry when I pull into work and see someone parked in MY spot. I don’t understand why it is hard to get the concept. I park there every day, I have been for the last 5 years, what the hell are you doing?
Luckily my spot was open, possibly because I was the only car in the parking lot at that time of day(because no one else is quite as neurotic as me), and I was able to happily park, check my clock and see that I was 35 minutes early.
So, I sat in my car for 30 minutes and did nothing.
45 minutes afterwards, everyone else showed up.
Taking Off the Training Wheels 