About a month ago, without realizing what I was doing, I pulled out the vacuum cleaner and sucked up some sand that my two daughters brought in with them.

After the floor was clean, I filled up the kitchen sink and did the dishes.

After the kitchen became its shiny best, I did the same thing to my office. You can now see the floor.

My wife watched all this with her mouth gaping open. She was scared. But pleasantly so.

You have to understand, this is not like me. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a slob. A pig. Slovenly. That I luxuriate in my own crapulence.

But not now. Now I have an obsessive need to clean, organize, systematize, rank, and classify. I storm through the dishes the SECOND the last mouthful is swallowed. I run the vacuum cleaner through the house five times a week. I sweep my desk clean twice a day. I scrub, I shine, I bust dust.

I need to do this. I don’t know why.

It’s starting to freak me out.

Kevin’s post made me laugh. I had the opposite problem. The day I was able to leave a coffee cup in the sink overnight was my personal victory, and my own form of growing up and letting go a bit.