OCD

Sibari, Italy---I’ve been here about a week and I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m getting obsessive compulsive disorder. I am cleaning and organizing everything around me. First I announced that I would inventory all the food on the boat. Shirish, the Captain was fine with that. Little did they know they had 54 cans of kidney beans let alone the pasta, once consolidated needed its own locker. So there is now the “assorted beans and tomato sauce locker”, the “pasta drawer”, the “rice and cooking floor, sugar, salt and couscous locker”, the “special locker” and the daily “working locker”.

I didn’t stop there. On to the oils and spices where I discovered a secret locker deep under the spice cabinet with huge bags of basmati rice and more spices. I now know we could be adrift at sea for 3 years and still eat like kings.

Once the food was done I couldn’t stop. I decided to photograph as much of the parts in storage as possible. Every time I helped Shirish fix or clean something I would yell “stop! Let me get my camera” and produce a nightly download on a USB stick of the days inventory.

There is storage EVERYWHERE. Under the floor boards, behind things, under things, above things, all brilliantly hidden by the teak floor, panels, doors and shelves. Some even take a suction cup to lift and get to.

After that, on to one of the kid’s bunks that shared winter storage and next year’s school books. Under it all, I found all sorts of long lost toys and gadgets that had “disappeared” in the year they have been at sea. Even one gameboy disk that the kids were convinced Shirish had thrown overboard in his disgust of their young lives consumed with video games. Which, by the way, is limited and used as parental incentives. If there were to be Mutiny at Sea, it will be over “screen time.”

So, on with the OCD: If that wasn’t enough, Shirish would send me off to get something and describe where it was. After too much time went by he would poke his head around the corner to find me finishing the cleaning and organizing of that drawer: rags neatly folded, mini flashlights separated by working and not working.

I THINK I AM DRIVING THEM CRAZY.

I overheard Mary Beth on SKYPE telling Shirish to let me be because “She is nesting.”

Oh good Lord. I didn’t clean this well at home! What on earth is happening? If this is “nesting” then I have egg on my face.