Feet vs. Fitness

In addition to being a full-fledged mysophobe, I am also a fitness freak. I have this horrible,permeating fear of being morbidly obese to the point of losing full flexion and extension in my joints, and needing a crane to take me from bedroom to bathroom. Because I begin to panic every 4 weeks, marking the point that a "new" workout becomes old and no longer challenges your muscles, I am constantly putting blind faith into innovative fitness products as seen on T.V.

It started with the Perfect Pushup. I wanted those arms, and obviously my arms would look like the ripped-yet-hot blond chick smiling as she pumped serious muscle milk. Then it was the Downward Dog Yoga mat, the DinoDisc, the Bowflex Light($$$$$), Bender Ball, and the list and credit card bill draws on and on until it just becomes a sliver in the horizon, eventually dissapearing.


So when Reebok came out with the balance-ball inspired EasyTone shoes, designed to firm up the butt, hamstrings, quads, and calfs (YES.PLEASE.), the shoes were as good as purchased. Unfortunately due to my stingy tastes, I refused to buy any of the current models becasue they were profoundly and undendingly ugly. Furiously logged onto Reebok's website, I was beyond relieved to learn you could design your own pair, and 3 hours later I have a champagne and candy pink duo that would surely kick my own ass.

I waited FIVE WEEKS for that pair of shoes. Finally, after an eternity of shoe purgatory, I came home from work to find a dented box perched on my stoop. What followed in the next few days was a roller coaster of joy, pain, angst, and sorrow. For the love of God, the manufacterers of my shoes forgot to use mesh on the majority of the pair as I had designed them. Instead, my EasyTones are a solid sheet of non-breathing material.

Non-breathing athletic material = super-breeding bacterial material. After a week of use, they reeked beyond any meaning of the word. Here's the crux of the problem: they worked. For the first time in my fad exercise purchases, I was seeing results. I lost 1/2 inch around both thighs, something years of the stairmaster has yet to accomplish. I even felt stronger, which is obviously secondary to looks (don't you dare judge me: you want the six pack abs for the beach not for battle). But the stench and the haunting images of bacteria bumping uglies in my precious EasyTones got to be a little more than I could stand. In a word, I lost it.

When I came to I was splayed flat out on my back, an empty aerosal can of Lysol Antibacterial Spray in Citrus breeze lolled against my temple. Hazy, I sat up, my eyes falling on my sopping wet pair of champagne and candy pink Easytones. Rivulets of Lysol ran down the sheeny, not breathing material, and in that moment I felt hate. How could a product this good betray me this badly? Why? What have I done?

I had to face facts: continue to get Jane Fonda gam results and stick my feet into cesspools of specimen, or give up the gig and wear my meshy Underarmour shoes and hope the starimaster ups its game and gives me those damned results. Eventually, I did what any self-respecting American would do: I wrote a letter. I wrote a letter very similar to what I have written here, the main point being that should I contract Lymphatic Filariasis from these shoes, the order Reebok messed up, then I shall wage a hellfire lawsuit war upon Reebok and all its affiliates. Histrionics aside, I got what I wanted, after another FIVE WEEKS of waiting: meshy, clean, pristing champagne and candy pink EasyTones, the way I intended them.

The Art of Selection Bias

I write this as I lay in bed kicking myself for posting a few days late. I can't believe I totally forgot to post, and because I have a plethora of mysophobic stories to relate I cannot fathom what would possess me to neglect the catharsis that is my blog.
Then I realized it was my boyfriends fault.
My boyfriend is a man, meaning he has a beard and bushy eyebrows (both of which come with their unique set of microscopic flesh-eating mites. seriously.), he washes his hands for 10 seconds at the very most (violation! should be 20), he will eat things that fell on the floor and he has been known to wear the same shirt around all day. In any other human being, these attributes would be the same level of heinous as Jeffrey Dahmer's extracurricular activities, pre-conviction. What is so aggravating to me is that Boyfriend is an exception to every obsessive-compulsive rule regarding human interaction and contact that I stand by. He is somehow immune. How did this happen? I suspect there must be nanobots involved in this, but that is for a different conversation.
I digress. The point is that I forgot to post on Tuesday because I was with him all weekend, and apparently engulfed in the amnesty of Boyfriend's germ-repellent qualities.
What I have deduced is Darwinian, if I do say so myself: through the forces of Nature, Boyfriend has been selected to surpass my phobia and thus interact (i.e. touch without dire consequences involving Lysol) with me. What exactly he possesses that accomplishes this is far beyond me, and I certainly have not yet ruled out nanobots. In any case, he is good company and has no qualms giving me a public lecture on the "ridiculousness" of some of my more specific tendencies (seriously, NO ONE was going to tell that little girl to cover her hellish, coughing mouth. I was doing the community at large a service.) Some even go so far as to say this dynamic is good for me, similar to the way a little germ exposure benefits my immune system. I am usually too distracted by the fumes of my anti-bacterial hand gel to fully absorb the good-intentioned nature of this advice, but I am almost certain the people saying it have the Cold and are just bitter about it. Suckers.
Boyfriend is turning in his sleep and is showing early signs of an REM sneeze. I barely know who I am when I say this could not bother me less. Natural selection, people.

Forsaking the Porcelain God

I was "out" last night. Along with four other good friends, I celebrated a monday night with the company of several beers. Anyone who knows me is well aware of my featherweight tolerance, and last night was certainly no exception. Drinking at bars is always a challenge for me because lots of people TOUCH things. With their fingers. This is why I limit my consumption to bottleneck beer, in the hopes that the tiny opening limits the amount of bacteria seeping in.
After more than enough Coronas, my unfortunate designated driver dropped me off in front of my apartment. I managed to make it five steps inside when my stomach turned on me. Finding no strength to make a mad dash to my pristine, recently-Cloroxed toilet, I am forced to approach the kitchen trashcan.
This is quite possibly the worst moment of my life. I need to throw up,which is already heinous enough, and now I have to yak into the trashcan filled with what looks like Tuberculosis and Gangrene.
I'll spare the details. But I am permanently scarred from the decision I was forced to make, and I spent the next hour simultaneously scrubbing myself down in the shower and rinsing with mouthwash.
Which incidentally had alcohol in it. This time, I was right next to the toilet.

Mysophobia

So I've been unprofessional. I have used "germobphobia" as a scientific term to describe my personal concerns of contracting disease. I foolishly felt I was using "Germophobia" as a scholarly term, something you find in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Wrong.
Evidently, "germophobia" is a slang, a dirty street term for "Mysophobia". According to the highly reputable, quasi-peer reviewed, online journal that is Wikipedia, Mysophobia is "a term used to describe a pathological fear of contact with dirt, to avoid contamination and germs." Further, those that "suffer" from Mysophobia are considered Mysophobes. Well. I feel misled. After all, it was in fact a gray-haired, squatty, 8th-grade English teacher that first accused me of being a Germophobe, following an incident of sharing a chewed-up pen with the pizza-faced Neanderthal that was my desk partner. Aren't these teachers supposed to have a Master's Degree? If you are still walking this earth, Mrs. Denny, I sincerely mean it when I say "Take THAT!"
But I digress. The term "germophobia" is just one in a series of words thrown carelessly around to describe Mysophobia. Apparently "bacillophobia" and "bacteriophobia" round out the list. My slightly obsessive compulsive nature is deeply disturbed by this confusion, because when I have an obsession I absolutely must call it by the right name.
This realization demands more research, which is soon to follow. After all, now I can't get it out of my head.

On Rage and Hysteria

Enraged doesn't quite cover the scope of my emotions at the moment.
Enraged, by definition, is to make extremely angry; put into a rage; infuriate.
I am extremely angry, I feel put into a rage, and I am certainly infuriated. However, this does not cover the borderline maniacal, hysterical, fury that also bubbles just under my chest bone. One could say I am hysterically, muderously, enraged.
For the love of all that is holy, somebody coughed onto my face.
MY.FACE.
A face is like the aircraft carrier of all germs: you can get in and out almost anwhere. They have all sorts of places to quietly sleep, reproduce, and thrive.There's the soft, conjuctiva of the eyes, the quicksand of the nostrils, gaping wound of a mouth (which, if you are 70% of the population, probably has an open cold sore on it at some point), and the black holes of the ear. And I essentially got maced in the face with bacteria.
I was sitting behind the desk at my place of work, quietly minding my own business. A patron of my work walks in, and I recognize him as one of my favorite customers. He has a question about our new services, prices, blah blah blah. He reveals he's been fighting a "nasty cough" for quite some time; I silently gag and pray he will have a sudden overwhelming urge to leave my work. Miracuously he does, but not before heaving a massive windstorm of cough onto my face, not three feet away from me.
Well.
Once I came-to from my rage blackout, I grope around the desk for a tissue and some antibacterial handgel. Somewhere far, far, away, I detect the client's muted apologies; however my ears are ringing from the white-hot hatred I feel toward him. I hack into my tissue, hoping and praying to undo the germ spread his own cough could have done to me. By the time I calm down, the client has long ago sprinted through the door. I am alone, seething, and my finger twitches over my doctor's speed dial (he's big on antibiotics). Reminding myself how important exposure to some germs can be, I hold off on the doctor call, but do not completely dismiss it. This time, because I feel so completely defeated, this time the germs win.

The Arsenal

I'm a functioning germophobe, which means that I retain (relatively speaking) an element of control over my phobia that allows me to participate in daily life. This is due mostly to what I refer to as my Arsenal.
The Arsenal is a series of products, weapons of mass bacterial and viral destruction, that I use on a daily basis. The Arsenal provides prevenative, emergency, and pallative treatment against any and all daily exposures. The Arsenal also includes rituals that minimize collateral damage.
In a nutshell, this is the main squeeze, the blood and guts, of The Arsensal:

1. Bath and Body Works Pocket Instant Hand Sanitizer Gel in Japanese Cherry Blossom scent. At any given time I have five of these bottles placed strategically in the most frequented areas of my life: One in my brown pea coat and one in my black pea coat; one in my purple going-out clutch; one in my Jeep's glove compartment; and one on my desk. Picture Superman laying naked on a heap of Kryptonite. Yeah, that's me without my Japanes Cherry Blossom Hand Sanitizers. 5 for $5, baby.

2. Clorox Wipes. This is an excellent cleaning tool for the more nefarious germs out there, namely Kitchen Germs and Bathroom Germs. There is a bottle next to botht the kitchen and bathroom sink, both of which get a wipe-down at least once daily.

3. Lysol anti-bacterial spray. Watch out, Envrionment: I have aerosol and I'll use it till it counts as huffing. KIDDING! But seriously, my kitchen gets doused in this stuff each and every time someone cooks something even remotely raw. I am haunted by the image of raw meat being flung carelessly from batter to cooking pan; all i see is raw chicken juice sliding on the oven handle, fridge door, etc. I bascially follow up every cooking step by gassing the kitchen. This is my roomates' least favorite member of The Arsenal, as I am constantly 2 steps behind them during cooking, spraying each exposed area. I hear this has the uncanny ability to ruin romantic home-cooked dinners, but somehow my roomates have not reported me yet.


Next are the actions in The Arsenal. These are designed not to kill germs, but to prevent them from ever touching me.

1. Mad dash to the open door. See, getting a paper towel to open a door handle is all well and good, but that wastes unneccessary paper, and I feel I already am wreaking chemical warfare on the environment with the first three members of The Arsenal; I don't want to add paper waste to that list (too frequently, that is). Thats why when I see a door open, I run pell-mell to it to get through without touching the handle or massacreing trees. This occaisonally leads to strange bathroom interactions, or the extremely unfortunate circumstance of getting stuck in a closed door. I would give it a success rate of 88%

2.Tupperware. I wash my own tupperware, I witness the entire sanitation process; most importantly I am just about unable to eat off of plates and silverware from restaurants, especially the Styrofoam atrocities offered at the JC. Therefore, I pack my lunch of assorted probiotic and organic birdfood into my personally cleansed Tupperware,. I rarely get nauseous at the thought of eating off my Tupperware.

3. Toothbrush + Baking Soda + Boiling Water = Toothbrush sterilization. I MUST have my teeth and mouth clean at all times. I literally squirm if they are not up to par. However I always have the predicament of brushing my teeth with bristles that have been sitting in the open air, snatching germs up with the leftover water droplets. That's why every night I boil 1 cup of water, let a lumb of baking soda sink into the brushe's bristles, then wash the brush in the boiling water. This proces almost always allows me to brush my teeth without kirking out.

Are there more rituals and members of The Arsenal? Oh yeah, you should hear about the Special Circumstances Force. But the above 6 listed are the ones that I do so often that chances are if you see me for more that 1 hour at a time, you'll catch me doing at least one of them.

The Sneeze

I am sitting in Fenwick Library, just upstairs to the left in my favorite spot next to the banister. Sitting next to the banister is key because it limits the number of people that can sit next to me to one person at a table behind me. The library is empty, and I'm plugging away at a project
Then I hear it. It's an echo from the exposed lower level: the unmistakable sound of an uncovered sneeze.
There is an underbelly of society, a group of people that revel in their ability to tip the Richter scale with their sneezes. They are operatic in delivery, a dramatic combination of force and expulsion. Most heinously, they are uncovered. Through my extensive observations, it appears these people feel a sneeze aimed downward negates any and all germs shot out of their nostrils and mouth. This belief is comparable to the notion that the world is flat, or that the Twilight saga was well-written. It is simply incorrect.
Snap back to present: the echo of the sneeze fades from the air, and after slowly and deliberately counting to 10, I return to my work.
Heavy footsteps and chair shuffling behind me interrupts my thoughts. A casual backward glance stops me dead cold: it's the Sneezer.
His identity is unmistakable: his nose is red, chapped and running freely. Lose tissues burst out of his front pockets, and in his back pockets are wadded up tissues that I can only conclude are used. Biting back nausea, I force my eyes from the scene, not before witnessing his sleeve cross the nose and mouth in an effort to clear the snot enveloping the lower half of his face.
Oh. My. God.
I tell myself to deal with it. I tell myself I have to ignore it, that I must push past it. Maybe I would have succeeded, been able to ignore the fact that of all the tables in all of George Mason University, the Sneezer chose the one directly behind me. Maybe I could have even made great strides against my germophobia today.
Except for the fact that not 2 minutes after setting in, the Sneezer unleashed a monsoon of sneezes. In the vacuum of silence that follow, he giggles and says "Bless me!"
Bless you indeed, you filthy disgrace.
I turn to him with a hatred burning a thousand dying suns bright in my eyes, and spit out, "The proper way to sneeze is into the nook of your elbow."
Gathering my things, I flee the library.