Chores and OCD

I am Obsessive Compulsive, I admit it!  And it's getting worse as I get older!  Sometimes you don't realize how bad it is until something happens that screws with your normal routines in life.  Ok, if you're OCD, maybe Normal isn't the correct word to use.

Chores

When you decide to co-hebetate or get married sooner or later the issue of who does what chores or duties around the house will come up.  In most successful marriages these are arranged into each partners area of responsibility and then there is a list of general duties which falls to who happens to be there at the moment.  At this point I am not even going to go into the range of disgusting and sick things which will come up when you add children into the equation, as it is only fair that those who are not already parents get left some surprises.

As far as chores go it is best to get your dibs in early!  I am the man of the house so naturally I grabbed taking out the trash as needed, rolling the trash cans out to the curb once a week, mowing the lawn once a week, picking up leaves, cleaning the gutters maybe twice a year.  I also jumped all over the laundry!  Laundry is easy!  Women generally don't mind doing laundry, just everybody hates the folding of clothes and hanging things up and putting them away.  I don't mind doing laundry and have refined it to an OCD wet dream of a science over the years.  When it's time to fold the clothes I either listen to music or set my Kindle up with this $20.00 speaker thing I found at Walmart and listen to it read to me!

Last week my dryer went out.  I grabbed the owner's manual, which every good OCD person has safely stashed in a safe place near the appliance, and checked it out.  It told me how to take the top off the dryer and check the computer board for a LED light which should be on.  I removed the top of the dryer and there is NO LED light anywhere on that board.  I used to be an avid electronics experimenter and actually built several robots in my garage years ago when a state of the art computer was a 386 processor.  There was NO LED light!  ANYWHERE!

The next infuriating part was inside the case of the dryer was a motor, a heater, this small sealed computer panel and nothing else beside the drum which spins.  It took me seconds to figure out that everything was there needed to run the machine.  If I got a hand full of toggle switches, a timer, and got my tools I could get this thing to run!  My sensible and beautiful wife who manages to keep me somewhat sane called the repairman.  Who promptly came out and charged me ten dollars to look at the machine and tell me the computer board was out!  NO SHIT!

He and nobody else in the world apparently stocks these boards because they are expensive and to stock every type for every model of machine would be cost prohibitive.  I'm thinking unless you work for or run an appliance repair mobile service, then it would be quite handy to have had the fore sight to order freaking parts, especially the main parts, the computer boards.  So I am waiting for the part to come in and going out of my freaking mind because I can't freaking wash and dry clothes.  I could technically wash them but hanging them out to dry this time of year would not be feasible unless I had a way of defrosting them, or as it has rained the last three days.

It took the dryer going out for me to realize how OCD I have become about washing clothes, sheets, wash clothes.  As the pile by the laundry basket gets bigger I get more insane.  The repairman is supposed to be by tomorrow to hopefully fix my dryer and rape my bank account just before Christmas because my wife doesn't want me starting the house on fire with a dryer that resembles Frankenstein's cousin on life support.

I have realized I have become OCD about my writing which helps me continue it in order to stay calm and not freak out.  Which for my fans should ensure many more years of novels, if my wife doesn't smother me in my sleep.

Have a Great Day, Happy Writing, Happy Reading.

Dear God Please let this guy fix the damn dryer!!

Posted in: Chores Dryers OCD Laundry