Every weekday, I prepare meals for roughly 200 kids. Sometimes we go all old school cafeteria and heat up prepackaged, frozen food, but there are many days when the entire menu is fresh and made from scratch.

This picture shows my latest burns. I also have a scar on my wrist, a scar near my elbow and a scar on my left forearm. I decided to add some marks to the right side so that my forearms would match.

Earlier this week, in addition to my new burns, I was dicing tomatoes when I cut through my glove and into the tip of my thumb. I also sliced my palm with the wire tie that was holding closed the frozen corn.

And then, when we were eating dinner the other night, my 11 year old daughter finished chewing a bite and said, “Mom, this is really good! You should be a cook!”

All that suffering and I can’t even get any props.

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My mind is rarely at rest. As an insomniac, I have taken to keeping my phone on my nightstand so I can jot down the thoughts that pop into my head at 3:00am. It seems that the middle of the night is when I frequently remember that I need to pick up a birthday card, or that we need eggs or that the permission slip for my daughter’s field trip is two days overdue.

During the day, my mind is constantly occupied as well. If I’m not reading, writing or watching television, then my brain starts getting busy. But, this isn’t when I have coherent thoughts…this is when my head is filled with irritating music.

For instance, every day when I make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at work, I sing “Bootylicious”. That’s right. I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly. On Sloppy Joe days, I channel Adam Sandler. When we serve fruit salad, it’s The Wiggles.

The problem is that I don’t invite this music. I don’t ask it to come in, sit down and kick up its feet. But, it does. Sometimes it stays for tea, then grabs a pillow and plops down for a long nap.

Yesterday my day started with my son humming “Oh Susanna”, which stayed in my head until I made the PBJ’s. “Bootylicious” hung around until one of my co-workers asked if I had seen the guy on American Idol singing “Pants on the Ground”. Maybe that song wouldn’t be so bad if I knew more than ten words.

After school, my son mentioned how much he likes the song “Down by the Station”. Which turned out to be awesome because it’s completely normal for a 38 year old woman to be walking through Target singing songs about “little puffer bellies all in a row”.

When I got home I found that someone had sent me a video of Justin Timberlake singing “Hallelujah” from the Hope for Haiti telethon. I knew it would be stuck in my head, likely for the rest of the day.

And after all that bad music, what was my first reaction when I saw that link in my in-box?

Hallelujah.

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1. If you once had a dog who ate a dead bat and you had to pull a string of wet, possibly-rabid bat out of her throat, you may think, “I have never seen anything so disgusting in my life.”

2. When that same dog gets older and decides she likes to roll in other dog’s poop and you find yourself giving her a bath and she does the wet dog shake and soaped-up poop goes flying all over your bathroom, you will realize you were wrong about the bat being disgusting.

3. And, 15 years later when you get a new puppy and see that she likes to roll in dead animals you may find yourself thinking, “If that’s the worst thing she rolls in, things will be okay, because remember that one dog…who liked to roll in dog poop…”

4. Then on a day much like this past Saturday, your new puppy may roll around in horse poop and you’ll think, “Well, it certainly can’t get any worse than this.”

5. But, it’s possible that on the same day, after she’s been bathed and sanitized, that puppy might suddenly decide she likes Mexican food and eat an entire bowl of salsa.

6. Which means you might stay up all night waiting for the explosive salsa-diarrhea you know will come.

7. But, it doesn’t.

8. And you’ll realize you stayed up all night for nothing.

9. Until the puppy throws up and it smells exactly like…horse poop.

10. And you may find yourself thinking, “Seriously? Why couldn’t it smell like salsa?”

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Yesterday afternoon, the cafeteria prefect at the school asked if it would be okay if she hurried my son along after he finishes his lunch. It turns out, that while I’m busily working 40 feet away, he is dilly-dallying through clean up.

Kids can’t be dismissed until their area is tidy and although my son stays well into the next lunch period and gets back to class later than anyone else, he still feels the need to take his things to the trash can…one by one.

First it’s the straw wrapper, then he walks around the entire row of tables to get his straw, then his milk carton, then his tray, then his napkin. I don’t think he’s stalling. I think it’s just an aspect of his OCD.

I will be the first person to say that he gets his compulsions naturally. Between me, my mother and my mother-in-law you could lay our compulsions end-to-end and circle the earth. Twice.

My mom took her dog for a walk the other day and told me that she went 845 steps. Then she went on to say that if she had gone around the block she would have taken over 1000. She doesn’t wear a pedometer. She also has a morning routine that you do not want to mess with. Trust me. I’m more of a have-to-have-the-dishwasher-loaded-correctly or laundry-has-to-be-folded-nicely-and-put-away-neatly kind of chick. So, you really can’t call me odd.

A true compulsion would be if I reloaded the dishwasher every time someone else tried to do it, so I would know that all of the forks were tines up, all of the sharp knives were pointing down, all the ceramic dishes were on one side and all the plastic ones on the other and that all of the cooking utensils were in the top rack. Or, if I went back to the drawer where I had just put away laundry in order to make sure it hadn’t folded over on itself. Not that I would know anything about that.

I mean, it would probably seem as if I had issues if I did something like say the exact same thing to my daughter every single night before she goes to bed and give her four kisses on her forehead. It would be stranger, still, if the words I uttered to her were the exact same ones my mother said to me as a child.

Or, if I also gave my son four kisses each night and rubbed the back of his furry little head in the spot where I first touched him as a baby.

I’m certainly not crazy! I don’t line up my shirts by color, or always cough twice, or crack my neck, or constantly rub my chin to see if another gray hair has popped out. Oh wait…

Now that I think about it, my son is doomed.

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