Cohabitation Situation

I have a touch of OCD. 

I know this about myself. 

The WebMD site says a common symptom of OCD is the “need for order, symmetry or exactness.”  Check, check, and…

…yes, check!

Ironically, I’ve moved in with a guy who has virtually no need for order in his life*.  AT ALL.  Imagine it….

No, sorry.  I can’t either.  I don’t get it.

*(Actually, I take that back.  Oddly, he has the exact same love of spreadsheets that both my sister and I have.  I mean, he keeps track of all the concerts he attends in an Excel spreadsheet!!!  God love him.  But, hang a towel back up after using it?  Um, utter nonsense apparently).

It’s funny, too, because the very last thing my Mom said to me when we were saying goodbye before CK and I hit the Penske to drive down here.  “Don’t drive him crazy,” she says.  Good advice from the OCD creator herself! 

And, I am trying.  Seriously.  I am.  Stuff strewn about…and stuff out of place in general…just drives me absolutely CRAZY.  And, I’m not even that clean a person.  I’d rather do basically anything than scrub a floor or clean the shower (it’s why I need to invite guests over fairly frequently…the fear of embarrassment is about the only thing that can motivate me to break out the Scrubbing Bubbles).  But, I have to have everything put away and in its right place.   It’s a sickness, I know.

So, I’m working on not getting irritated by stuff that’s left out (I’m having “a sense of humor about it,” as my Mom suggested).  I dutifully wander around the house and try to put away anything that’s getting under my skin (like, WHY must papers be left on the stove??  Fire hazard aside, it’s just freakin’ weird that it would be used as a storage space to begin with.  And, why…WHY does the cell phone charger have to be permanently plugged into the wall with the cord dragging along on the floor right behind the chair where I sit to eat dinner so that my foot skids out from underneath me every SINGLE time I go to sit down there?!?!?!?!  PLEASE ANSWER ME!!!  Hoo, sorry.  Holy run-on sentence, Batman). 

Because I’m 100% sure the very fact that I’m putting this stuff away all the time is probably irritating the CRAP out of him (he’s got to be thinking, “Why, WHY does she have to put away my cell phone charger when I just have to get it out again in the morning to plug it into what must be the most super convenient location in the whole entire house?!?  I don’t get it!”).

Like sands through the hourglass, my friends…