Disorder

Small bits of disorder in daily life make me grind my teeth. I don't like for things to be slightly broken, slightly dirty, slightly out of order, etc. Better for there not to be a single clean glass in the kitchen and a layer of mold growing on top of the standing water in the sink than for there to be a little spot of tomato sauce drying on the counter.

Today it was high time to give the house a good thorough cleaning. After I vacuumed the bedroom, I went to pull the plug for the vacuum cleaner out of the wall. To my surprise, the entire outlet followed along with it, which also ripped a bit of wallpaper away from the wall.

Now, just to be clear, we live in an almost brand-new house. We moved in last April before the paint was dry. This means that most everything else is the house is still shiny and there are even parts that still smell of fresh carpentry.

So I sat tranfixed on the floor, staring at this outlet, calling for Fredrik to come look at it immediately. After he tried to shove it back in and determined that it hadn't seemed to be screwed to anything, but rather just sort of resting in the little plastic eldosa thing (sorry, svengelska), he said he'd call the builders tomorrow.

Now, this is perfectly reasonable. The fact that we live in a nearly brand-new house does, technically, make the whole thing easier. We just call the builders and mention that our outlets seem to be held in place by a mixture of friction and faith that seems to be wearing quite thin and ask them to fix it. But I'm not quite patient enough for that. I imagine my eyes glazed over as I sat there on the floor, with tunnel vision for this tiny bit of chaos, and I was honestly considering starting to growl menacingly at it.

This is when it became clear that Fredrik is fully aware of many aspects of my OCD-lite or whatever it is. He's seen how I reacted to the grease stain on the wallpaper next to the dishwasher (not that anyone ever looks down there anyway), or how I spent a whole New Year's Eve snapping at my friends because a little piece of plastic broke off of our stove when we took the food out of the oven (it was replaced by our landlord as soon as we called, as the plastic bit had long since been recalled by Electrolux and replaced by a metal bit). He held out his hand to help me up and suggested we leave the room and play a board game.

If I have to have near-crippling psychological quirks, it's at least nice to know that I'm loved enough that someone understands them so well. Happy anniversary, Fredrik.