{"id":448,"date":"2010-07-13T20:08:47","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T00:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=448"},"modified":"2010-07-13T20:08:47","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T00:08:47","slug":"ocd-is-a-defense-mechanism-or-only-the-paranoid-survive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/?p=448","title":{"rendered":"OCD is a Defense Mechanism, or, Only the Paranoid Survive"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDid you turn the oven off?\u201d is a clich\u00e9, one of hundreds we joke about all the time, like the person with the glasses on their head looking everywhere for them, or geniuses who can\u2019t match their socks to save their lives.\u00a0 It\u2019s a clich\u00e9, like any other dime-a-dozen clich\u00e9\u2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Until the first time you come home and realize that you have, in fact, left the oven not merely on, but on and set for \u201cbitumen\/anthracite overkill\u201d on the broiler.\u00a0 For several hours.\u00a0 The house smells of meat overcooked weeks ago, the HVAC unit is screaming for mercy under the onslaught, and the pets keep checking roll call to make sure they\u2019re all still there in case one of them\u2019s next.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You\u2019re checking your oven now, aren\u2019t you? \u00a0Before you get up, I\u2019m going to take a moment to admonish you to check your smoke and CO detectors, too.\u00a0 You do<\/strong> have carbon monoxide detectors, right?\u00a0 We talked about this, right?<\/a>\u00a0 OK, go check the stove and the alarms, I\u2019ll wait.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back?\u00a0 OK.\u00a0 This concludes the PSA portion of today\u2019s post.\u00a0 And let\u2019s hear it for obsessive compulsive disorder \u2013 you might not get much done, but you\u2019re going to live through it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another\u00a0in the \u201cmother was right\u201d category; not too long ago I was compelled to call my own mother when I did, in fact, cut my damn tongue licking the knife.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even remember what I was licking off; I just remember the sharp, searing pain of embarrassment \u2013 shit, she was right.\u00a0 I had to call to let her know.\u00a0 Since then I\u2019ve learned that I can use that as a compelling argument to my own children.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t do that, because when you hurt yourself you\u2019ll have to come tell me and I\u2019m going to laugh at you!\u201d\u00a0 (Although my friend B sums it up much more succinctly: \u201cNo sympathy for stupid.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Do you have a “wow, I never thought I’d really do that” story you’d like to share with the group?\u00a0 We’re all friends here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yes, the house still has that faint \u2018eu de char\u2019 \u2013 smells kind of good, actually. \u00a0I might be inspired to try another Julia Child recipe\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDid you turn the oven off?\u201d is a clich\u00e9, like any other dime-a-dozen clich\u00e9… Until the first time you come home and realize that you have, in fact, left the oven on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[61,26,42,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":450,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions\/450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}