Jan 15, 2009 | Captain OCD
In an episode of Monk the other night, Monk got out a couple of eggs for breakfast, then put the egg carton back in the refrigerator. After closing the door he paused for a minute, opened the door again, got the eggs out, and arranged them in the carton so they were equally spaced. I told Captain OCD about this: “See! I’m not the only one! If you don’t balance the eggs, you run the risk of picking up a dangerously unbalanced carton and then you’ll have broken eggs all over the floor. And then you’ll fall and break a hip. I’m just trying to protect my family.” He does not know what the theme of Monk is, so now he thinks his egg-carton balancing has been justified. Lost on him is that the writers of Monk thought that that scene, sans dialogue, was sufficient indication of the severity of the character’s neurosis.
Captain OCD buys our fire logs at a lumber yard, where they know him well.
I need 42 logs.
We can do that. Can I ask you a question?
Sure.
Why do you usually get 42? Why not 40 or 45, like most people?
Because it’s a multiple of six and I carry six at a time. That way I don’t waste a trip upstairs with less than a full load. So my next number would be 54.
Not 48?
Well, that can present a dilemma because 48 is kind of a difficult number. It’s too close to 42. So, if I’m going to get 48, I might as well get 54.
Makes perfect sense to me.
I’m not sure if, in these trying economic times, especially for those supplying materials to the building industry, they’re indulging this good customer of theirs or if they’re agreeing with him. He, however, suffers no such uncertainty.
Dec 21, 2008 | Captain OCD
There is a shiny, newly rebuilt front driveline for a Ford truck sitting on the chopping block in the kitchen. The chopping block where Christmas cookies will soon be cooling. U-joints, with their machined-steel bearing caps, are attached to the ends of the driveline. Captain OCD is holding the oldish, unshiny U-bolts to the bearing caps on the U-joints and I ask if that’s where they go because I can’t quite picture how it’s installed under the truck. Surely those crusty old bolts don’t mate with those shiny new surfaces? He says yes, and shows me how the inside of the U-part of the bolt is flattish where the bearing caps are supposed to rest. This offends my aesthetic sensibility and I question his assertion. He doesn’t understand what part of what he’s told me I’m not comprehending: “Haven’t you ever installed a U-joint before?”
Good thing C1 brought the driveline over this morning, because this is no weather to be without all four of your tires pulling their fair share of the load. 
We like our chives nice and cold.
Dec 2, 2008 | Captain OCD
On his days off, Captain OCD works. The creativity, ingenuity, and hard physical labor required by what he does is as much sustenance to him as is air, and he has met some really nice people as he helps give shape to their dreams for their homes. He has spent a lot of time at this particular Very Nice House doing Very Nice Work. Here’s yet one example of the extensive work he’s done at this house. What used to look like this:
Now looks like this, and every bit of this long stairway was done by hand: Demo, excavating, hauling, and building, because there was no access for machinery. The engineering behind this was no small feat, either, which is where the ingenuity and problem-solving that he loves so much comes in:
Leading down to the deck he rebuilt:
There is a neighbor dog who runs around destroying the other neighbors’ property. He’s chewed through things that don’t belong to him, including tools, plants, and parts of buildings. The driveway at this house was seal-coated and the dog ran through that when it was wet, then ran around the new decks and walkways Captain OCD was finishing, leaving fresh asphalt sealer in the shape of paw prints to dry on the surface. He’s free to run around and destroy things because his owners “just don’t know what to do with him.”
This is part of a guest house belonging to the dog’s owners, and it is beautiful (and that’s a front view of the stairs):
Today Captain OCD noticed a mess on the front lawn of the guest house comprising things that used to be inside the house. Then he noticed that the front door was ajar, so he went over to investigate and saw the dog and a compatriot in the house, somewhat worn out from the hard work of tearing up furniture, among other things. Because he is a much nicer person than I am, he tried to get the dogs out, but they wouldn’t cooperate, so he went back to work and waited for the owner to get home to tell him what had happened. Which was apparent when one looked inside the house to see one of the dogs asleep on the white leather couch.
Oct 2, 2008 | Captain OCD
All this time I could have been sleeping easier knowing that my loved ones were protected by ROPS and FOPS.
Maybe you had to be there.
Sep 17, 2008 | Captain OCD
All of our animals have always been fat. Captain OCD has always fed the animals. I’ve reasoned, wheedled, cajoled, pouted, yelled. I’ve told him that he’s doing them no favors (“But they’re hungry! Look at her sad little face.”). I’ve told him that he will have vet-delivery duties so he’s the one who gets yelled at for enabling obese animals. I’ve provided progressively smaller scoops. I’ve told him just one scoop, not heaping, per animal. I’ve provided progressively smaller bowls. When the only outside cat comes in, the cat who tends to get skinny in the summer, he pours more food in the bowl because she’s so skinny and she’s getting older and so must be coddled, even though she’s probably just polished off a muskrat. That she hasn’t been that skinny for a few years and is now, in fact, the size of a normal cat, is lost on him. As is the fact that the other two pigs are sitting on their fat haunches in a line behind her, eyes boring into her as she nervously chews the food, intimidating her into leaving so they can scarf up every last crumb.
This is not the normal-sized outside cat (looks as if we require our animals to have the same color scheme):
But that’s not how he works. If there’s a scoop, it must be heaped. A bowl must be overflowing no matter how many scoops it takes to accomplish that. One squirt from the shampoo bottle isn’t enough because he’s constitutionally incapable of doing anything in singular. So it’s three pumps of shampoo, four pumps of dishwashing soap, two napkins with dinner (only mine – why would he need a napkin when his pants are already dirty?), and always more than one scoop of cat food. This must not be unique to our home because the vet said he keeps the cat food locked up and no one else is in his family is allowed to feed the cat because they all overfeed it
I also wondered why our dog was so hopeful during every meal, acting as if she’d get fed from our plates even though she never has been, but I admired her unflagging hope. I’d say to her, “Like that pathetic look has ever worked before.” Until one morning I got up early and interrupted Captain OCD’s lunch-making routine. Busted. Apparently every morning has been Christmas morning for the animals: Chunks of cheese, pieces of lunch meat torn off in hunks from the corner because it’s too much bother to peel off a slice, maybe some tuna from a fork, a little reheated teriyaki chicken and rice. So that’s how he knows that one of the cats is fond of cantaloupe.
With our current dog (about four years old), I took over the feeding duties (I’ve rearranged my schedule so that a scoop once a day from the garbage can on the porch to the bowl two feet away isn’t too much of a hardship) so she’s not fat. The cats, however, still are. He feeds them early in the morning, when he’s up and I’m not, or else they’ll be obnoxious and wake me up, and one thing I’m not going to do is get up early to feed the stupid cats. I didn’t do it for the kids so, if nothing else, I don’t want the kids to think I’m playing favorites. I believe in equal-opportunity neglect. I feed the cats a little bit late at night when I’m up and he’s not so they won’t wake us up in the middle of the night being obnoxious. Every morning I go in that room and am slightly irritated because there’s evidence that he’s done the same thing he’s done for the past nearly 27 years.
About a week ago I had a brainstorm. Now, every morning I go in there and dump about half the cat food back into the bin. A quick study, I am.
Sep 13, 2008 | Captain OCD
Not a lot of flowers around here in the middle of September. These are chive blossoms and cuttings from a newish eucalyptus plant. Captain OCD thought he was scraping the bottom of the barrel to put this together but I love the sort of dusty colors against each other.
