Irony

As you may or may not remember my mother started her own blog* not to long ago. She updates it probably once a week. You know what… my mom can be kinda funny on occasion. Ok, maybe it is because she’s my mom and I get all the inside jokes. Or maybe you have to know her in person to know that the excessive use of exclamation points is really how she talks. You see, my mom has ADHD. Of course it took her until her late 40s to figure it out for sure. She also suffers from OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Now some of you might say why tell the whole of the internets this and why the hell do it on a blog your mother actually reads? The reason is she writes about these things too. Better yet, she is fully aware that she has these issues as they become a frequent topic of conversation in our family.

Mom’s OCD is in the form of cleaning. This is especially bad when said sufferer of OCD is a pet person. Two words: dog hair. Growing up we had dogs. A large German Shepherd and then a Cocker Spaniel. A few years before the Cocker died Mom got another Shepherd. That one was an inside dog, and he was big. Since then the dogs have passed on and Mom now owns two cats. Two more words: cat hair. The pet hair drives my mom nuts. So nuts that she vacuums her house daily if not twice daily. One of her proudest accomplishments in life is right after she went on medication for the ADHD she didn’t vacuum one day. One day.

She used to give us chores to do around the house. They all involved some form of cleaning or another. I am pretty sure it was secret punishment for my sister and I being such pigs growing up. I remember on one occasion being taught the fine art of the vacuum. Vacuum marks had to run parallel with the dining room baseboard heater, not perpendicular. OCD. Today I blame it on the OCD and hold my mother in no way responsible for my horrible fear of the vacuum cleaner.

But what I find truly ironic about the whole thing is that my mom now lives in a quiet little neighborhood out in the boonies. She has finally taken an interest in gardening and not only is her house clean, but it is well decorated on the inside. Something that wasn’t a part of growing up. However, next door to my mother is her arch nemesis. My mother’s next door neighbor is a hoarder. A very bad hoarder at that.

Oh the irony of it all! Mwwaahhhahhhahhh!

*and yes, that is my mother in the tree, and I do avert my eyes whenever looking at that tree when I visit because she pruned it herself. She gets her mad pruning skillz from her dad.