OCD

This morning when making my first coffee of the day, I performed a ritual I have now every weekend for the last two years when I use particular coffee cups that I was given for my birthday.

I have recognised for some time now, that I have a minor obsessive compulsive disorder.

My assessment of my condition:

• enough for me to recognise it;
• though not be worthy of comment by others;
• be able to have a laugh at myself about it; and
• to consider myself on the anal-side rather than completely dysfunctional.

On some occassions I like to indulge my OCDs to the hilt and other times completely ignore them.

When making coffee though, I rarely ignore it so here it is.

I have four beautiful pastel coloured Robert Gordon latte cups and four espresso cups. There are two latte cups and two espresson cups in pastel pink (strawberry so the site says) and two latte and two espresso cups in pastel green.

My coffee machine is a small domestic branded Gaggia Classic. I found that I am unable to filter two shots of coffee directly into the latte cups when making flat whites and instead must first filter a shot of espresso into the espresso cups.

When making coffee for P and me, I choose a green latte cup for him and a pink latte cup for me. There is good reason (so I think!)to use different coloured cups as he uses full cream milk and up till recently I used reduced fat and of late soy milk. He also has sugar in his coffee I don't. So the different colours for the latte cups assists in my differentiating the style of coffee easily.

I believe though, that the choice of colour (as a very amatuer socialogist/psychologist I have absolutely no idea what I am theorising on I haven't reasearched any of this)is probably because of my ingrained social conditioning, the use traditional colour coding to define the feminine from the masculine.

When I filter the first shots of espresso I don't have to but I choose to use one pink espresso cup and one green espresso cup. I am sure you can see where this is heading......after I have filtered the shots of coffee, I then have to transfer the shots of espresso like so,

THE SHORT BLACK FROM THE PINK ESPRESSO CUP MUST BE POURED INTO THE PINK LATTE CUP AND THE SHORT BLACK FROM THE GREEN ESPRESSO CUP MUST BE POURED INTO THE GREEN LATTE CUP.

On the rare occassion that I fail to follow this routine and pour from the green espresso cup into the pink latte cup. I am extremely annoyed with myself and have been know to remark out loud about how STOOPID I am! I have various other rituals when making coffee regarding wiping the bench, not leaving coffee grains ANYWHERE and wiping the milk frother as well it's all too tedious to detail in the minituae any further.

I wonder though, exactly how strange I am when it comes to my OCDs, am I underestimating my problem or I am merely eccentric and endearing ? ;) If I am not in trouble now, am I headed for trouble?

DO I NEED HELP? (I think I may do, if I continue shouting in my posts like Dooce)

P.S. my husband started me on a new one OCD recently. When putting cutlery into the dishwasher, he thought it was a good idea to put the knives with the knives in one compartment, forks with forks, spoons with the spoons etc. All pointing down. The cutlery pointing down thing is due to my hearing of an accident where a woman was impaled on her cutlery after slipping over in the kitchen (I wonder if that was a myth?)

P has fallen by the wayside, me I have fully embraced my new cutlerly putting in the dishwasher lifestyle and have even performed it at someone else's place. Yep I need help.