We’re all stuck in the house surrounded by tornado warnings. I was just going over our tornado safety plans with my mom via text, but we found ourselves at an impasse regarding certain details. Stick baby in the dryer-yes. With the cats? –disagreement as that would require the dryer door to be shut. I guess I could put the cats in the washer instead… What can I say? I love my cats. Well, I love one of them. The other is about on my last nerve with her puking on my bed and tearing up our couch. My intense favoritism of one cat over the other does not bode well for a second child.

Did you know that OCD can cause concussions? I didn’t either, until this week. The other day my husband was cleaning up around the house because…because it had been five minutes since the last time he cleaned up around the house. He bent down to pick up one of Connor’s toys that had rolled against the wall under a window. He misjudged his distance from the sill and bent down full speed to pick up the ball, smashing his head into the sill, resulting in a mild concussion, and a dent in our windowsill. What with his bad knee, achy back, and head injury, I can’t even give him a playful smack anymore, which is challenging, because I have the compulsion to smack him quite frequently. (Editor’s note: just heard him on the phone assuring someone that he’s ok. I should probably include details like that. Between the blog and Facebook, I’m forever making him explain these kinds of things. “No, no. She didn’t mean that the oven LITERALLY blew up.”)

I’ve been sleeping really well lately because I started taking melatonin before I go to bed. I sleep more deeply and wake less frequently. It also helps to lessen one of my OCD areas of focus that I affectionately refer to as “Is Connor breathing so I can go to bed?” Here is my typical “Is Connor breathing so I can go to bed?” routine.

1. Watch chest rise and fall.
2. Listen for sound of breathing.
3. Hold hand under his nose to feel exhaled air.
4. Place hand on chest to feel rise and fall.
5. Put hand under nose again.
6. Lightly touch finger to lips to see if they open.
7. Lean as far over the rail as possible to reassure myself that I did really hear him breathing.
8. Brush my hair lightly over his face so that he stirs just a little bit, without waking.
9. Feel comforted that although I possibly hallucinated my success with 1-7, surely there is no way I hallucinated number 8 and for him to move, he, unquestionably, must be breathing.

If melatonin is kicking in, it’s time for bed. If not, repeat of routine optional.

Does anyone else have a nutty perfectly reasonable routine like this?

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