Look, look, look, look, look, look.

I do not have OCD, at least when it comes to the more stereotypical behaviors. I do not wash my hands over and over. I do not daily polish my mirrors and my bathroom handles and the canister that holds our cotton balls. I do not brush my hair a hundred times each night before sleep.

I do, however, suffer from random acts of anxiety. Like when it's 2 a.m. and my daughter said she'd be home by 2 a.m. so I only half-fall asleep and at the requisite curfew look at the clock every 3 seconds, so that in that one minute of time that it is 2 a.m. I've looked at the clock 20 times.

Or when I get good news and I have something to show for it--a letter, an e-mail, a little handwritten note set by my bedside--I keep clicking it open (or holding it in my hands) to read it, over and over, like that scene from Castaway when Tom Hanks keeps clicking his flashlight on to see the cameo picture of his girlfriend. On and off. On and off. On and off.

So I've finished my twenty pages of writing to submit for the Loft Mentor series. I was going to do 40 pages and submit something in two genres but I simply ran out of time and energy. I e-mailed the pages to work and throughout the day yesterday I clicked on the file and read it, then clicked out of it competely and saved it in my home folder. Then I clicked it again at noon. Click on, click off, click on, click off. Somebody slap me, please. Like Cher in Moonstruck, just come over and slap me.

Last night I got all tucked in and called out goodnight again to the son, brought the covers right up to my ears (wasn't it a great night to sleep in St. Paul, brisk and crisp?), and fell fast asleep. But then at 3:50 a.m. my eyes were wide open and I felt the agitation in my shoulders. Like a sleepwalker I sort of floated down the flight of stairs and pulled out one of the three neatly stapled photocopies of the writing and read it once more. Which was good because this time I said to myself, "Okay, that wasn't half-bad."

So this morning, feeling all happy and accomplished, I jumped into my reasonably newish car with plans to buy a chai and muffin at Sisu and at the corner of Scheffer and Hamline, the Vibe died. Died there on the corner. I was so NOT-OCD by that point that I just pushed it over to the side of the road and called a tow truck. I didn't even open up the hood to see what might be wrong (not that I'd know). Didn't even check the bus schedule to see when I might hop a ride to work.

Nope, nothing's ruining this little glow of accomplishment. Maybe I'll even bring along some of those twenty pages and read them aloud to the tow-truck guy.