If you’ve been following me on twitter, you know I’ve been suffering from an OCD/Anxiety relapse. Yes, the INSANE kind I had in my pregnancies. Just ask the TDot Book Club Bloggers. I’m afraid of my blackberry right now — terrified. And I probably shouldn’t have gone to Book Club last night because I was all, “Hi, how are you? I have ANXIETY! I have OCD! I’m CRAZY! I’m CRAZY like when I was pregnant and was, like, calling the FARMERS who produced the cheese that was in the ravioli I’d eaten at a restaurant the week before to see if it was actually pasteurized [this was before I went vegan, of course], and if the farmer said ‘I don’t know,’ then I was convinced I destroyed my baby.” Remember that, Gorgeouses? The TDots were, of course, SO understanding and supportive. It was a good thing I went. LOVE.

I think my favourite “obsessive thought” EVER was The Weevil Incident. I was about 20 weeks pregnant with the Monkey. I was at work, eating a pack of almonds, and I suddenly realized there was a hole in one of the almonds I’d eaten. It was a perfect hole. Too perfect. So, I went up to my colleague at work and told him about the hole in my almond. It’s a “weevil and a mouse,” he said (we’d been working on a book about weevils and flees and such other GREAT subject matter for me and my morning sickness).  “A weevil and a mouse did that,” he snickered, “those almond factories are infested.” Of course, in my MESSED UP, clinically prenatally depressed preggers mind, this was a real possibility. SO I called the assistant director at Motherisk (I had her direct phone number, of course), and I called my family doctor: “Hello!” I gasped, “I just ate an almond and I think there was a hole in it that was made by a weevil and/or a mouse, IS MY BABY OKAY!?” Yes, this is TRUE. TRUE TRUE.

And here we are again. At this time EACH year, it seems, the doom and gloom and freakish obsessions that characterized my pregnancies RETURN. And here I am crazy.

Last night, I was so crazy I couldn’t blog. And, then there was this morning…. I had to go to the office. They have no idea what EXACTLY it took for me to make an appearance there this morning. It’s bad, Gorgeouses. It’s bad. But, I’m getting some help. My doctors are helping me, and CAROLINE DUPONT.

Yes, it seems my ego gets MAD and VENGEFUL whenever I make positive changes in my life. Pregnancy, meditation, yoga, green smoothies…. Ego is NOT happy because Ego is not the centre of attention. Ego is being silenced and Ego doesn’t like it. So, Ego is trying to TAKE OVER and MAKE IT STOP. It likes it when I’m stuck. It hates change. It likes repetition, addiction, certainty. But, screw it. I’m on to you, Ego. Moving on.

And I can tell you THIS BOOK did not help my anxiety. In fact, it may have triggered an episode or two….

I should not be reading books like this month’s TDOT Blogger Book Club Book of the month. Books about a TRUE murder of a 3-year-old “flaxen”-haired boy — OMG, the Rascal’s hair could not be more FLAXEN and his features more CHERUBIC…I SHOULD NOT BE READING THIS. I am NOT A CANDIDATE for books like this. And I should have KNOWN when I picked this book up in the TRUE CRIME section of the bookstore that I am NOT A CANDIDATE for this book. And, indeed, I flinched visibly when the computer directed me to the TRUE CRIME section of the bookstore.

Yes, so this was one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read. Sure, it was brilliantly written in a very detached, exquisitely researched, resourceful, investigative way that self-consciously focused more on detective JONATHAN JACK WHICHER — the inspiration for some of the best 19th-century fiction from Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins (LOVE) — than on the poor FLAXEN-HAIRED boy who lost his life in the most violently disturbing way. And, see I can’t and couldn’t escape the FLAXEN-HAIRED boy because my mind is incapable of registering such a heinous, gruesome event in a detached way. MY MIND goes straight to FEAR.

Fear. The bane of my existence. My life’s challenge has to be to manage it, understand it, overcome it, teach my kids to overcome it. And so, Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher remains in my basement until I can find a better home for it. Far far away. In fact, I may drive it out to some remote forest FAR FAR AWAY. I’ll put a blindfold over it so IT CAN’T SEE where I’m taking it and, THUS, can’t find its way back to my house ever! And I’ll find an environmentally-friendly way of disposing it forever. So it can’t haunt me like the GHOSTS of poor little SAVILLE KENT and his killers are said to haunt the house at ROAD HILL….

Ahh, good times. And OY! I had so much else to blog about. It’ll have to wait ’til next time. Very good sign that I’m writing tonight. Yay. Baby steps….

Sadly, a lot of that is VERY FAMILIAR…. Damn “What Ifs”!….

Baby steps!

Next month’s book? It’s MY PICK: Annabel Lyon’s highly acclaimed The Golden Mean — so definitely not HORRIFIC, and apparently very SEXAY! Sweeeet.