Day 176 – Who has a disorder?

A couple of weeks ago, Doug was really concerned about Lukas and how he is (by Doug’s measurements which are based on nothing but his opinion) ready for kindergarten.  I tried to calm his concerns by letting him know what Lukie works on at pre-school, what we do at home together and what current kindergarten teachers are looking for in students.  This seemed to make the concern go away.  Last week Doug came home talking about wanting to move to San Diego.  I thought, OK I get it, he has had a couple of bad days at work and the temps have been dropping here.  I only started to get concerned and slightly annoyed when I noticed he was spending hours searching for houses in San Diego.  Sweetheart don’t you think you should search for a job first?  I got him a book from the library called the Happiness Project in hopes that it might help break him out of his job and location funk.  Next, he listened to something on NPR about teen suicide and obsessed about that for several days.  I listened (apparently so did Samson as he tried to tell a “joke” about people killing themselves that did not get the intended response from Daddy).  Suicide interest/concern seemed to fade quickly (because who really wants to try to discuss that topic with 4 &6 year olds and at this point I was kind of not listening?  In the same week, Doug talked to a friend who’s doctor recommended that he take a low dose aspirin everyday.  Doug went out and bought aspirin and tried to convince me I really needed to take one every day.  OK, probably won’t hurt you, but costs money and how about talking to our Dr. first?  Then on Friday Doug called me at home and mentioned he had spoken to someone who’s son was diagnosed with OCD and was concerned that one of our boys was showing symptoms.  Enough already!  Finally, Doug read the first chapter in the Happiness Project book where the lady decides that she is in part not as happy as she could be due to clutter.  He proceeded to spend the next 6 hours obsessively cleaning and rearranging my kitchen.  Is there a disorder we can apply to people who always have an emergency or drama of the day every day?  Love you Doug.  You certainly keep it interesting.