“Rain, rain – go away, come again another day.” How many times I have thought the words of the popular nursery rhyme. Some people love the rain. I like it in small doses. I am a lover of sunshine. But that’s not the main reason I wish it away. Because of my OCD, it greatly complicates my life.
One day of rain does not cause a major disruption in my routine, but several days do. Or in the case of this week, even two days can make my life difficult. What contributed to the problem was that the weather forecast was incorrect. I was led to believe that there would be a break in the rain on Friday, which would allow me to do my necessary shopping, but there was no break. And as it was the end of the week, I couldn’t put off shopping until the next day. And the rain was supposed to continue through the entire weekend anyway, which it did.
And this is how I had to cope with it. I had to go to the store after work. By the time I arrived there, it was both wet and dark. The main problem with shopping in the rain is that I cannot open the trunk of my car because the water will run off the car and drip inside. And that is where I ordinarily put most of my shopping bags. There is no other clean spot to put them in my car, except one small plastic box in the back seat where I keep magazines, gloves, and other supplies. I can fit one bag or a few items in the box in an emergency. But this time I had more bags that needed to be kept clean than would fit into the tiny box. I was able to stack one bag on top of the pack of paper towels, so that helped, but there was another bag that had nowhere to go but the seat of the car. What makes that so risky? The bag could fall over, and the groceries could spill out, or the bag could have a hole somewhere, putting the contents into contact with the seat. But I didn’t have time to think about that for long with the rain coming down on me. I had to pile everything in the car and hope for the best.
After getting home, I didn’t unload the groceries right away, probably because I didn’t want to face any hassle that awaited me. And not to be disappointed, the bag I placed on the seat did, indeed, have a hole in the bottom. Somehow in my confusion trying to remove the groceries from the bag, I managed to contaminate both the tops and bottoms of two boxes of granola bars. To rescue the bars inside, I had to put on gloves and hover over a clean towel spread out to catch them as they fell out of the boxes. Even that wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I had to make sure that they didn’t touch any corners that had been contaminated in the opening process. And then there was the bottle of rubbing alcohol. I had to assume that the bottom of the bottle had come into contact with the car seat, so I had to lay the bottle on its side and spray it several times throughout the evening with, ironically, rubbing alcohol.
Fortunately, those were the only items affected by the rain this week. It’s been worse before. But the rain is not this germophobe’s friend.
