There are days where I don’t shower before going to work. If I don’t work out the day before, or really run around a lot to the point where I’m a bit…well…not so fresh, then I’ll shower.

There’s other days, like today, where I don’t need to. This lets me sleep in at least another 15 minutes! You all know how I enjoy to sleep in.

The unfortunate side-effect of this “sleeping in” benefit is that when I leave the house, I’m still a bit sleepy. Not so sleepy that I can’t drive safely – but when I get to the park & ride to catch my bus, I’m hit with the nagging suspicion of “did I close the garage door?”

For a normal person, this little tidbit would not cross their minds. However, I am not so blessed to not be nagged by this. Why?

Because I’ve left the door open before, and it’s haunted me ever since.

Last February/March, when I was working 9-1 at the normal job on Saturdays for their busy season, I pretty much did the whole “no shower/sleeping in” thing because, well, I went to work in sweats and nobody really cared because they did the same damn thing. This one particular Saturday was normal, I went to work around 8:30am, and returned home around 1:30pm…to an open garage door.

I had been gone for over 5 hours and my garage had been sitting wide open, a lot of my belongings sitting open and free to the world (since I had just moved in, a lot of my stuff was still in the garage) and the door into my house was also unlocked.

Thankfully, there weren’t any roving bands of thieving pirates in my neighborhood that day (and my ghetto neighbors hadn’t moved in yet) and fortunately for me, nothing was stolen or even touched, for that matter.

Now, unfortunately for me, I get a bit obsessive-compulsive about either making sure that damn door is shut or worrying about whether or not the door is shut.

I have done the following on one occasion (or more):

1. Drove more than 5 miles back home to make sure the door was shut.
2. Made Tim turn the car around and drive back home to make sure the door was shut.
3. Freaked out for an entire weekend while I was out of town, nearly calling friends of mine to drive by and make sure I shut the door. (I had, but I did worry all weekend about it.)
4. Gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to check because I didn’t remember shutting the door.
5. Called Tim at home from the bus to have him check to make sure the door is closed, usually getting him out of bed. (which is what I did this morning.)

I feel bad for doing these things, but if I hadn’t had such a massive lapse in consciousness, reason or whatever you want to call it in the first place, I wouldn’t worry about it now. Despite the fact that ever single time I’ve checked since that one incident – the door had been shut. It doesn’t stop me worrying about it every once in a while.

Now before you write me off as some lunatic – this only happens maybe once or twice a month, tops. It’s not like I go through this nervous “washing the hands, washing the hands” twitch every damn day. It’s like I convicted my brain of a crime, it’s now on parole and I’m its parole officer checking up on it.

Ok, so that was a weird analogy.

I think I need more coffee.