Cleanliness is Next to Preggers-ness

If cleanliness is next to Godliness, I have a permanent seat in hell.

I have always been more of a dude when it comes to sanitation, leaving piles upon piles of dirty clothes on my floor and wearing my socks to the point they could walk home on their own.  In college, I washed my hair a grand total of — I’m just estimating here — two times.  You know, for special occasions… like the Pi Phi winter formal and the one time I went to Macro Economics class.

My sanitary habits have historically been so deplorable, in fact, that they even caused my mom to drop The Bomb.  The F-bomb, that is.  Mom is no prude, mind you, but she managed to censor the F-word from her vocabulary while I was growing up.  I’m realizing just what an impressive feat that was now that I’m mindful of the little one, ears fully formed, in my belly — especially when I’m driving.  I fear Baby Girl’s first words are going to be:

“USE YOUR FUCKING TURN SIGNAL, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!”

Seriously.  Is it THAT HARD to push the stinkin’ lever?  I.  DON’T. THINK.  SO.

So now we’ve established I am dirty and have anger management issues.  Which explains why my mom got fed up enough to finally drop The Bomb when I was 16.

“CLEAN YOUR FUCKING CLOSET!” Mom screamed.

There it was:  The F-word!  It was shocking enough to give me pause… before I rolled my eyes and sighed, “Yeah, like, whatever, Mom.”

Oh, I can’t wait till my daughter is a teenager.  Joy!

But since I’ve gotten pregnant…?  I can’t STOP cleaning.  The piles of clothes:  gone.  Those sauce-crusted plates in the sink?  Scrubbed.  Friends tell me I’m “nesting,” which sounds creepily similar to what birds did in my hair in college.  The weirdest part is that I am OBSESSED with brushing my teeth.  Obsessed like Kanye-West-admiring-his-reflection-the-store-window-obsessed.  When Mr. Candy and I return home from sharing a nutritious dinner at Burger King, he laughingly counts down the minutes — nay, seconds — till I run up the stairs and relieve my chompers of the film covering my teeth.  That’s right, laugh at my pregnancy neuroses!  Little does he know I suffer from a serious medical condition called denta pregnancae obsessia that I just made up.  Meanwhile, I can’t eat or drink anything without feeling like my teeth are going to decay that MOMENT if I don’t immediately get a hit of toothpaste.  Crest is my crack.

Brush, gurgle, spit, repeat… about a hundred times a day.

Better this extreme than the other, I suppose.  Although I do miss my socks jumping into the hamper on their own.  That was rather helpful.