Continuing Throat Problems, Odd Cabinet Connections, and OLD – Thoughts from February 1, 2026 – Part 1

On January 22, I had my checkup appointment for my throat. I changed the cough drops I used, but I could still feel something on my vocal cord. The polyp had grown back. I saw that on my last appointment. When the doctor came into the exam room, he asked how my throat was doing. I explained the change in the cough drops, but something was still there. With the camera down my throat and swallowing several times, he took a few pictures. Finding the best one, he brought it up bigger on the screen. Compared to the last appointment picture, it looked little different.

The doctor put on the screen the first image he took when I first came into the doctor’s office for my throat. That polyp was much bigger than the current picture in front of me. It disappointed me that little had changed since my last appointment. I knew I still had to work on healing my throat, but this was proof that the cough drops weren’t the only problem. A few days later, I decided I needed to go back to drinking water on my way to work instead of popping cough drops. The problem with this is the dancing I do when I get to work from all the water in my hour-long drive.

I was finally able to finish one section of the kitchen. It was a series of lower cabinets that only had one wall to connect to. The biggest challenge was fitting the last cabinet between two floor vents. It didn’t connect evenly with the other cabinets. I had to build odd connection points, but it connected solidly in the end. In screwing it in, I moved the back of the cabinet right next to the vent. When I put the wood grained panels on the back of the cabinet, I would have to cut out a section for the vent cover. It’s not the worst thing, but it’s not what I wanted. In other words, it wasn’t perfect.

Recently, I created an acronym for myself to explain some of my common behaviors. It is based on OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). I don’t obsess over compulsive behaviors as much as I obsess over illogical things in life. My new term is OLD (obsessive-logical disorder). When I see people behaving illogically around me, I grieve in my head for the people behaving illogically. I have spent my whole life trying to find the most logical ways to do things. From my long commutes to and from work to the many times when people do not adhere to the keep to the right rule of walking, I want to have a master class for the public on how to live life. When people open the left (wrong) door in front of me, I occasionally open the right (correct) door as if they didn’t open the door at all.

The best example of my OLD is when I’m first arriving at work. I go to the building I work in and open these double doors that lead immediately to stairs up and down. There is a bar in the middle of the stairs that goes to the top. Just as you should logically walk through the right door, you should walk up the right side of the stairs. A few times, someone has already started down the left (wrong) side of the stairs. I wait for them to get all the way down before I walk up the correct way. There is not a purposeful scowl on my face, but I know it’s probably there. When I get to the top of the stairs, there is another set of double doors. These doors need a new paragraph to explain them. Actually, I need a whole new article to continue the extent of my OLD. This humongously entertaining explanation of my mental illness will continue in Part 2. Obsess at you later.