I'm not even the tiniest bit OCD, dangit.

MMM, so did you notice I haven't been blogging up a storm, like I sometimes do?

Well, something has come over me, and I've been feeling driven to clean things out.

No, I'm not nesting. I'm NOT pregnant. If I were pregnant, I would be lying on the couch, not cleaning anything at all, in a woe-is-me type posture (one hand slung over my forehead, one dangling to the floor), with a look of supreme, saintly patience and suffering. Or maybe I would be crouched next to the toilet in a fetal position, ready to spew my just-consumed meal. For the 8th time today. And all over my pale, saintly face, but especially around the eyes, would be tell-tale broken capillaries of the puking mama, and I would look like a rabid, saintly raccoon. And somehow, still ravishingly beautiful.

But I do not look like that. And I am not pregnant. I am just cleaning stuff. For no reason at all.

Which, for me, is WAY more unusual than just being pregnant. WAY.

And while clean stuff, I wear my new apron that my sister-in-law Jane made for me (yes, she sewed it herself) with my Nanette Lepore heels. It is super duper fab, and I can't believe I can't wear it out of the house. At least I can dress up in it and take pictures for my blog!

So, where was I? Ah yes, the cleaning spree.

The pantry. Threw away lo-carb bbq sauce from 2004. Who wants to risk ruining dinner over small amount of calories involved in such an important condiment? Not me.

The refrigerator.

All the cabinets under all the sinks. Big job because I keep my hoarded toiletries under there. If a girl is going to store a year's worth of Sure unscented anti-perspirant and Colgate Total in her house, she cannot be lackadaisical in her organizing. Which I might have been, before yesterday.

The food storage. I reorganized and put all like items together, which should make finding black beans in an emergency situation easy-peasy. Plus, I cannot shove junk under the beds in the house, if I have already crammed every cranny of space with wheat and beans, right?

My jewelry box. Which is a big job cause I like to keep lots of crap like tiny sterling silver armadillos from when I was 10, even though I don't know where it came from, and the 50 cent piece the Tooth Fairy left me when I lost my first tooth at my Grandparents' Laytons' farm in Willcox. And a tiny, one-legged ceramic puppy that I got after mommy and me tap and ballet that we took with Melanie and Sherry at Northridge Park in 1979. Assorted locks of hair and baby teeth. Solitary gold hoops and broken silver chains (because you never know when the government will start collecting our precious metals for the war effort, like they did in WWII. Plus, you can't throw away gold. Is like using cash for toilet paper. And only Oprah can do that. Not that she does. I haven't heard anything. I'm not starting any rumors.) Also, there is the beautiful shiny wooden box that my engagement ring came in (engagement ring has been lost for 2 years). And a broken watch made in the USSR that used to be my sister Jen's, that she was going to throw it out, cause she's a little OCD; but then I kept it, because I've got whatever the opposite of OCD is. There has to be a more PC term than 'pack rat,' and if you know what it is, please let me know. And don't say 'hoarder', because the only thing worse than being called a rat is being called a... Anyhow, all my pretty jewels are there in the box, too. And much more. It is a big jewelry box. And it is packed full of crapola.

I'm also going to give away half my clothes to Deseret Industries, if I can find a few hours to go through them when Tommy isn't trying to sneak out into the street. Street-sneaking is his primary vocation, these days. I get stressed and nervous, and I start to freak out when I think about it. Even though right now he is safe asleep in his crib tent. So I won't speak of it any more. But now my eye is twitching a little. See?

I am going to go through the book shelves and cull the herd again. I have such trouble getting rid of books. Even bad ones. It is like I'm their adoptive Mother, and I have some responsibility to care for them, and keep a roof over their heads. The eye twitch is getting slightly more pronounced as I write about giving away books.

Why can't I be just a tiny bit OCD? Just enough so that as I lie in bed at night, I won't be able to sleep if the sink is full of slimy dinner dishes. So then, I'll have to get up and do them. In the morning, my kitchen will be clean, and I will be so happy about that. Life would just be...better. As it is now, I can sleep like a baby. Stinky, crusty dishes and all.

Sorry if I'm giving you nightmares, Jen.

I realize that OCD is no laughing matter for people suffering with it. What I'm saying is that in its lowest possible concentration, it might be a little bit nice. People call you 'organized, efficient, tidy, and overachiever." Instead of B-pluses, you get A's. Because who can stand B-pluses?

Me. That's who. I stood B-pluses. Many of them. Cause I didn't get all worked up and study all the time and do my reading assignments before each and every lecture, like someone I know (Jen), who I think never even got an A minus in all her years over to the BYU (Jen).

When I was about ten, Jen kicked me out of our shared bedroom for my slovenly habits. Then, I would invite my friends over to watch her clean (she was so tiny, fast, and single-minded, it was pretty entertaining). For fun, we'd sneak in and walk all over the the careful, straight lines she'd made in the carpet with the vacuum, then watch as she'd roll the vacuum back down the hall to start all over again.

This week, with all my organizing, I've been feeling a little like the mild OCD case I've always aspired to be. And my house is happy. And my husband is happy. And my kids...are not happy, because we started piano lessons again, and they don't like practicing.

Which reminds me how when I was a kid, Jen practiced circles around me on the piano, even though I have the huge, potentially wonderful piano hands, and she is 3.5 years younger than I, and eventually our teacher fired me and kept Jen as her prize pupil. Thanks, Sister Reese. I like the guitar better, anyhow.

It is really a wonder I even LIKE Jen, isn't it? But I do. Everybody does. She's quite likeable, dependable, trustworthy, etc., even if her house DOES always looks like a model home. We have so much in common, like we both can't wait to see "The Duchess" with Kiera Knightley, which was a great book. But we are Felix and Oscar. Only very recently has she stopped threatening to send the people from Mission Organization (she loves that show) over to my house and put everything I own on the front lawn (and I don't even have a front lawn, people, just rocks and creepy desert plants that look like giant spiders and can potentially kill you with their pointy poison parts, and occasionally shoot out giant, phallic growths, straight up in the air, that I find mildly embarrassing. They would give the whole yard a PG-13 rating, if yards had ratings like movies, which they don't), and then the MI people berate me for not being mildly OCD like all the people that work on that show. Even the cameraman, probly.

I told her that I always look through the peephole in my door, and if there are people with cameras on the porch, I'm not opening the door. Cause my house is NOT THAT BAD! Really, it isn't! Actually, it is sort of good. Unless you look in the drawers and closets. (Cause that's where I stash stuff. Important stuff I really, really need, like tiny,three-legged ceramic dogs from the late 70s.) But anyhow, I guess if Publisher's Clearing House comes to give me my millions of dollars, I'll miss it. Cause like I said, I'm not letting them in.

So then, I won't be rich.

All because I'm not mildly OCD.

(Except this week. This week I am a little. It has been nice.)