Hey everyone – long time since I've blogged and there are lots of new people here. Welcome all 🙂

So my main contamination deal is not germs, but I have struggled a bit with toilet nastiness. For a long while, I couldn't clean the bathroom, so the toilet got pretty gross inside. Real world gross, not just ocd gross. So the little droplets of water that sometimes splashed onto the seat or floor or seatcover really bothered me. After using the bathroom, I would wipe my bare feet with baby wipes and I would change shirts so that the back of my 'dirty' shirt wouldn't touch the seatcover (where drops might be) and then touch the sofa or seat in my car. I eventually became able to clean the bathroom, so it's no longer gross, but I kept doing the footwipes and shirt thing.

Neither of these was too much of a bother to me, but my boyfriend caught me doing this and confronted me about adding more rituals.

So this week I started trying to stop. I REEEEALLY don't want to do an exposure with toilet water, so I'm trying to just stop doing the rituals cold turkey, so to speak.

I've had pretty good luck so far. Haven't used any wipes on my feet, tho it hasn't felt like I stepped on any liquid. And I stopped washing my arm up to my elbow, which I didn't even associate with this but I guess it makes sense. I was afraid my elbow was bumping into the seatcover, so I had to wash it.

I haven't changed my shirt either! (to be clear, I wear aclean shirt each day, but I had beenchanging into another new clean one after using the bathroom) I put on a hoodie after using the bathroom the first two days I've beentrying to do this, cuz it was like a layer between the shirt and the sofa. And I sit way forward on the toilet. LOL But today I pushed myself to just go sit on the sofa without adding a hoodie, etc. Stressful!!!But I've distracted myself with my tablet games and facebook.

How embarrassing to be celebrating using a toilet like a 'normal' person? I am feeling both proud of my efforts and foolish that it's even a problem. I almost didn't blog about it, but I know others on the Tribe are germaphobes too and would understand. Maybe I'm looking for a little pat on the back. 🙂

Regardless, I hope everyone is doing well and celebrates their victories, even when they're small. 🙂