Dirt... it's what's for dinner.

Today's local newspaper carried the article entitled, "Sweeping development: Dust bunnies good for babies." I had to give a little laugh.

I grew up in a household that would have been considered immaculate by 99% of the world. No, wait, let me make that IMMACULATE. Every Saturday morning, before my sister and I got up, my mom religiously got down on her hands and knees and cleaned her kitchen floor as well as the front and back porch. It was easy to see the tracks of the vacuum cleaner in the carpet from one week to the next... because people were afraid to make footprints in them! Heck, I had a girlfriend in high school who once confessed to me that she didn't like coming to our house because it was too clean and she felt she'd mess something up. You laugh? Nope. I'm dead serious. I kid you not.

Now, while I am nowhere NEAR the housekeeper my mother is, nor that my aunts are, and I certainly don't come close to my maternal grandmother (God bless her) who would roll in her grave if she saw the dust bunnies and tumbleweeds of cat fur in my house, my house is often cleaner than many people's places. I think I have OCD... *hides*

Correction, I KNOW I have OCD when it comes to a few things. Such as hand-washing for example. I read an article last week that encouraged people to wash their hands more frequently to prevent the spread of germs and disease. They quoted "experts" as saying that if we washed our hands between 5 and 8 times per day, then we would see an improvement. Um... okay. You folks won't believe this but my hubby can verify it. Last year, after a comment from my mom about how she noticed I DESPISED dirty hands and obsessively wash my own, I decided for sh*ts and giggles to count the number of times I washed my hands in the morning between the time I get out of bed and the time I leave the house for work. The number I came up with?

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Twelve.

In an hour and ten minutes, I washed my hands 12 times. Scary huh?

I look at it this way... between today's article about exposure to fungal molecules and the boost they give to immune systems, etc., and knowing how obsessive I am about my hands, any child of mine will be picked up by relatively clean hands, but hey, what's on the floor is free game. Have at it. But try to leave some for a midnight snack.