I like to worry about things. Stupid, irrational, improbable things. I always have to check to make sure doors are locked, ovens are off, and irons are unplugged, or I’m positive that the house will be full of burglars trying desperately to escape as our house burns to the ground, all because someone forgot to put away a curling iron and double-check (triple-check?) the deadbolt.

As I sit here, theoretically doing homework on campus, I’m instead BLOGGING about my PARANOIA. Good thing I brought my laptop to increase my “productivity.”

I knew that there was a 70% chance of rain today, but I also wanted the chickens to be able to go outside so they could kick around in the mud and cockadoodledoo for the ever-appreciative neighbors. The outdoor part of the coop doesn’t have a roof, and the chickens are kind of ditzy (see also: stupid) and forget that they can go inside when it starts raining, opting instead to stand there sopping up the raindrops. We ended up stringing a tarp up, which seemed to kill two chickens with one stone: they can go outside, and they won’t get wet. Now, however, I’m paranoid that while I spend the next 10 hours at campus, the tarp is going to be filling with water, getting really heavy, and screwing up the structural stability of the coop. When I get home, I’m expecting to find a collapsed coop, where all the chickens are either running amok in the forest and getting eaten by predators, or smooshed under the tarp.

My other paranoia of the moment has to deal with the garage door. Our new house doesn’t have one of those safety garage doors with an electric eye like the old house did, and even though people have managed to LIVE FOR DECADES without safety garage doors, and even though I myself used to have one of these very death traps and would even run under it WHILE IT WAS CLOSING, I’m still paranoid about it. I’m busy worrying about a scenario that my “Safety First!” brain has concocted whereby I didn’t close the interior garage door tightly enough (even though I checked it like 3 times), the cats escaped into the garage, and as we drove away, got CRUSHED UNDER THE GARAGE DOOR, all because I didn’t watch the garage door close all the way.

All in all, I can’t wait until we install the fancy, new, technologically-advanced Genie garage door opener that we bought at Lowe’s. The funny thing is, when we did have a safety garage door, we’d forget to watch it close and then get paranoid about whether or not we actually closed it, and if we did, whether or not there were any obstructions (broom handles, boots, errant ants) that might have gotten in the way at the last minute and made it pop back up again. So the burglars could get in. And turn the curling iron on.

I think there’s a term for this. I think it’s called OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER.