Thursday, September 08, 2011

My Pet Peeve

My husband hangs his bath towel on the back of the bathroom door.  A few days ago while I was doing some cleaning in the bathroom I (might have) accidently touched my husband’ s bath towel with my cleaning paper towel. If I didn’t actually touch it I came close enuf that it felt dirty to me anyways.  Now normally what is touched by a cleaning towel gets cleaner, right?  Well that’s not what happens if I didn’t MEAN to touch it.  Then for some reason it gets dirtier.  So the bath towel now has 'dirt' on it. From where?  The back of the door might have been touched by the dirty mildewy shower curtain that I finally got rid of (that’s a whole other event) and so if the cleaning  paper towel touched the bath towel, mildewy dirt got transferred TO the towel.  And/ or MAYBE the back of the cleaning towel where I touched it with my hand happened to get on the bath towel.  It’s hard to know for sure, because it’s all Invisible dirt. 

 I meant to tell my husband to put that towel in the dirty laundry before he took his next shower.  He broke routine and had one that evening when I was NOT thinking about the mess I created that morning.  So after his shower he (naturally) dried himself off using that towel, because he can’t read my mind.  I ask him if the above scenario makes him feel dirty after drying off with that towel and he says no.  So we discuss it a bit.  Then I decide he is right and he is not contaminated  so it’s ok to touch him.  Then I touch the night light to go to sleep.  The next day I am re-concerned about the whole thing, so don’t want to touch the light.  I had changed the sheets but didn't clean the light off.  I could clean the light but that would be giving in to the ocd.

  I decided not to clean the light but for the next few days wouldn’t touch it.  So no reading in bed at night L.  Finally, last night I decided to go for it.  I touched it, and nothing happened- except the light turned on.  No bad feelings or emotions ( I guess I already flooded my mind with that over the past few days thinking about touching it , so they were all gone) but – and here’s the  pet peeve- NO GREAT FEELING OF EUPHORIA EITHER.  After all that mental thought and finally action, I expected some internal choir or clapping or SOMETHING that said whoohoo!!!!!!! Fantastic job!!!!!!  Nope, nothing.  I touched my book and pencil.  Nothing.  Well, a bit of insecurity about dirtying up my Harry Potter book, but that went away quickly.  All I got was the chance to read my book.  Where’s the thrill of doing something hard??  I wasn’t expecting to actually HEAR cheers, although that would have been great too.  But no flood of endorphins or feel-great hormones.  That’s not fair.  There was no guarantee I’d be ok with touching the light.  So it was a risk.  As risky as jumping off a bridge with a bungee cord. 

1 comment:

  1. Ha! I know exactly what you mean! I always expect angels to sing when I overcome some of this stuff. Perhaps they are and I just can't hear them :-)

    Elizabeth
    http://babysteppingit.blogspot.com/

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