 |
| Yes, I have OCD, like this guy. |
You know how I said earlier that there would not be a blog
post today? Well, I lied. You see, there was a technical glitch this morning
known as “me.” I am pretty sure I haven’t shared this with you before, but I
take a few medications each night for some, er, conditions. I have
obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and I am also prone to depression and
anxiety. When I say I have OCD, I don’t mean it in the way many people use the
term, such as “Man, I am so OCD about keeping my bathroom clean.” I mean I
actually have the full-blown disorder, and I have to deal with keeping the
obsessions and compulsions at bay on a regular basis. One part of doing this is
that I take several medications. I take an antidepressant, a medication that helps
to reduce my obsessions, and a mood stabilizer, and I take them each night
before I go to sleep.
Which brings me to why I didn’t post anything this morning.
Last night, around 10:30 PM, just before I went to bed, I took my medications,
and promptly fell asleep. I was pretty tired, so not even knitting or Netflix
could keep me awake. Around 2 AM, I woke up and I was really hungry. Now,
typically, I do not eat things when I wake up in the middle of the night, but,
last night, I hadn’t had all that much for supper, so I decided to make an
exception. Rather than choosing an apple, or grapes, or something healthy, I
chose to eat some baked Cheetos. The bag was over halfway full, and I was
planning to count out the serving size, 34 Cheetos, for four Weight Watcher
points. I got out the bag and sat down on my couch, and proceeded to munch on
Cheetos and read the Buzzfeed app on my iPhone, careful not to turn the iPhone
orange with Cheeto dust.
I think I was around Cheeto number 29, when I looked down at
my shirt and noticed that there were several ants crawling on it. As you well
know, I hate bugs, so I quickly brushed the ants off my shirt. I have had ants
invade my house before when the seasons were changing, so I figured that I was
just having a minor ant infestation. I went back to eating my Cheetos. At
Cheeto number 33, I felt something tickling my hand. I looked down to see an
ant crawling on my finger and more ants on my shirt. I quickly removed them
all, and reached for Cheeto number 34, my very last one.
Well, to my horror, when I pulled Cheeto number 34 out of
the bag, there was an ant crawling on
the actual Cheeto itself! I was rightly disgusted, and, confused as to how
there could be an ant on my actual Cheeto, I looked down into the bag only to
see a truly disturbing sight: there was an ant party going on inside my Cheeto
bag! I wasn’t aware that ants preferred snack foods as a place to make their
homes, but, sure enough, there were dozens of the little critters, dark black
specks amongst a sea of orange.
I let out a scream similar to that which I might belt out
were I being chased by Leatherface, ran to the trash can and threw the bag of
Cheetos away, and then drank copious amounts of water and a can of Diet ginger
ale. You know, because Diet ginger ale, like a fine wine, pairs well with just
about any food, and it seemed to be the best choice for washing down the bagful
of ants I had probably just eaten. Horrified and feeling like there were little
ant legs crawling all over my body, I ran to my bedroom and hid under the
covers in my bed.
Needless to say, the Cheeto incident had left me a little
rattled, to say the least, and, because it was also 2 AM, my mental faculties
were not at their best. Now, I keep my nightly medications in their bottles on
my nightstand and, not remembering that I had already taken them before I went
to bed the first time, I took them all again. Maybe if I kept the medications
somewhere else, say, in my kitchen or bathroom, then perhaps I would have
realized, in the time it took me to walk to get them, that I had already taken
them. But, let me just tell you how much it sucks when you are already in bed
and ready to sleep or watch tv, and then you actually have to get up and go take your medications. As
I have mentioned before, I like to be pretty lazy in my leisure time, so each
night I put a bottle of water on my nightstand, and then I take my medications
after I am in bed.
Well, anyway, getting back to the point of this post, if you
take your OCD medications twice in a period of a few hours, they will have a
huge effect on you, meaning that you will sleep like Charlie Sheen after a
bender for the next ten or so hours. You might wake up a few times, and you
might even be coherent, but you will be unable to actually exit that cocoon of
sleep you are all nicely ensconced in, and you won’t be able to actually
complete any tasks without falling back asleep, plus, your speech will be
slurred, and you will sound like Charlie Sheen did during the course of his
bender, you know, right before he fell asleep.
So I woke up around 6:45 this morning, and immediately knew
something was wrong. I recalled the Cheeto incident and deduced that I had
taken my medication twice. I then texted my boss, because I didn’t want to call
her sounding like I was drunk, and she is cool and will allow us to text
message when we are not able to come in to work. I tried to explain the
situation as best I could without giving my full psychiatric history, and even
managed a relatively error-free text due to the miracle of auto-correct. My
boss, as usual, was very nice and understanding.
I then realized that I needed to post my blog entry for
today. I had an entry written, but I had not put in the pictures, and it was
not ready to be posted. I had not done the final preparations last night, and
had planned to wake up early today to put the finishing touches on the entry,
as I sometimes do. But, around 7 o’clock this morning, I was not awake enough
to do any of this, so I managed a quick post to say there would be no post, and
I went back to sleep. Sometime around noon I woke up again, and becoming more
and more coherent as the afternoon passed, I realized I really did not want to
miss a day of posting. Thinking that this whole debacle probably merited its
own post, I saved the previously prepared post for tomorrow, and wrote this
little account of my day.
 |
| Always check your baked Cheetos for ants before eating them! |
It is now around 4 PM, and I am finally awake enough that I
think I could probably drive a car or operate heavy machinery without seriously
injuring or killing anyone. I have learned a few valuable lessons from this
situation, which are as follows:
- Whenever you are going to eat baked Cheetos right out of the bag, always look in the bag first, you know, just to be safe.
- Put your nightly medication in one of those Monday through Friday medication organizers so that you will always know whether or not you have already taken it. (Also, look in the organizer to make sure there are no ants in there before you take it.)
- Complete all blog-related tasks before going to bed, so all you have to do in the morning is hit the publish button.
While I am not thrilled with the events of the past 14
hours, I think I have learned some valuable lessons that I will hopefully not
soon forget. And in case you were wondering, ants don’t taste like chicken.
They actually don’t taste like anything at all, which is why they are able to
stealthily invade your snack food bags without detection. Be vigilant, my
friends, about both your snack foods and your medications, and hopefully you
will never find yourself in a situation similar to mine!
Monk image courtesy of http://www.fanpop.com
Baked Cheetos image courtesy of http://www.fritolay.com
No comments:
Post a Comment