Quit coffee? What have you been smokin’?
It’s not the coffee maker; it’s usually the toaster oven for me. However, last month, after I was well on my way to a concert I was singing at on Good Friday, I became convinced I’d left my little George Foreman Grill on and it was going to burn down the apartment. After trying a couple of techniques I learned, the fear morphed itself into a massive case of stage fright! The concert went well, but I spent the first half terrified.
There’s a story I came across about this sort of thing which amuses me and gives me a bit of perspective. It seems a woman would always become convinced she’d left the iron on an hour into family vacations and insist they turn around, go home, and check it. When she finally did this once too often, her husband grinned broadly, pulled off to the side of the road, and produced the iron. He knew she’d do that and packed it!
As for me, I rely on an auto-shutoff iron and the knowledge that the one time I did leave the toaster oven on all day, nothing happened.
Whenever I leave the house, I always lock both doors, walk away, and then have a completely irrational moment of panic over whether I’ve locked them or not. It’s a thing.
That’s a good question. So far I’ve gone back and checked when the grey matter won’t shut up about it. Only twice so far as I said. Other days I’ve just ignored it with the reasoning that I must have shut it off and simply don’t remember because it’s such a routine action. As to why those two particular days I gave in to the hamsters on the wheel I really don’t know.
And there is no way I’m giving up the coffee habit! So there!
i do the talking thing too, for things I know have stuck with me in the past. However, since the talking it repetitive, I can remember saying “The fridge is shut”, but did I say it today or yesterday?? Then I have to remember the sequence of things, or what else I was doing, or what I was wearing, to prove that it in fact was today!
Classic! Sorry you are obsessive about these things.
Mr. Neville is TERRIBLE about leaving the stove or oven on. He leaves it on to keep food warm- I normally turn it off when I’m finished cooking, because it’s not a big deal for me if my seconds are slightly less warm. Leaving the stove or oven on to keep food warm wouldn’t be a big deal, but he often forgets to turn it off. So I’m always glancing over into the kitchen when we’re finishing up dinner, trying to figure out if he’s left something on.
My Luna will try to wash dishes that had chicken on them. Problem is, she does this with her tongue…
Or you could juts buy one of those plugs that has a timer and plug your existing coffee maker into that.
Just a thought…
I often find myself wondering if I put that last cigarette out before I left the house or not. When I’ve been away for more than a night, I always assume I’ll be coming home to burnt wreckage, even if I’m sure everything was off/unplugged/put out.
After locking my keys in the car way too many times, I’m now a fanatic about double-checking to make sure I have them in my hand or my purse before I close the car door.
…
Yep, they are hanging on the wall right now, not locked in the car.
Yeees I see them. Still there…
Not in the car.
Got em.
I don’t lock anythig, so I never worry about locking myself out. I don’t drink coffee, so no worries about that. But I have left my iron on and the dogs knocked it off the ironing board and burnt a big hole in my carpet. And once I left my oven on all weekend when I was out of town.
StG
:eek:
I don’t have any problems with thecking things in the morning before I leave. My problem is at night.
I check my alarm clock a dozen times before I allow myself to fall asleep.
Button to “alarm”?
Yes.
Time set properly, and at AM?
Yes.
Volume turned up?
Yes.
Lie back in bed.
Wait, am I sure I saw the little AM indicator light on?
Get back up, reach over, check again.
Was the button pushed all the way to “alarm”? Maybe It’s on “off”, I better make sure.
It’s exhausting.
I don’t really understand it. It’s the only thing I need to check a million times. And it’s not like I have a habit of sleeping through my alarm, or setting it wrong. I’ve only been late to work or school a handful of times in 10 years. And yet, I have to check.
My wife’s dad was a fireman. So I get a bunch of paranoia about whether things were shut off when we left the house. Can’t put the dishwasher or the dryer on and leave. They might catch fire. It’s the reason why we have had a crock pot for eight years and never used it. We can’t put the roast or cabbage rolls on in the morning and come home and eat them at night. The house might be burned down when we got here. No matter that none of this stuff catches fire when we’re home. It must be waiting for us to be so far away that it can combust in private and have done a lot of damage before we return. Why do our appliances hate us?
I don’t know, but they certainly do. My mother has pretty much programmed me to assume that anything turned on will explode the moment I leave the house.
I drive a VW Jetta. Drivers side will only lock with a key from the outside.
I dont have to worry 
I’m a checker, re-checker, and re-re-checker . . . ad infinitum.
I have an irrational fear that one of the dogs has somehow sneaked out the front door while I’m locking in (as if I wouldn’t notice an 80# lab on the porch). I have to unlock and re-open the door to conduct a dog count every morning.
As with previous poster, I’m also an alarm clock paranoid: Is it really set for AM? Is it on buzzer or too-soft radio?
My SO is careless with Things that Use Fire and I’m constantly checking to see if she left the stove on, didn’t clean out the dryer lint trap, or left the curling iron on high and in a stack of cotton underwear. In my defense, several years ago on St. Paddy’s day she put a corned beef on to boil and left the house for three hours. We returned to a blackened kitchen ceiling and a pea-size cornette of beef in the bottom of the pan :eek:
I’m really bad with keys, which is why I keep them in my hand when I leave the house. That way I know I have them with me before locking the door. No more feeling for them in my pocket and looking like a dork to any neighbors who have nothing better to do than to watch me leave my house.
I’m also obsessive about checking my alarm clock, making sure its set to AM, the time itself is correct, the alarm is actually engaged, etc. but I feel justified in doing this. There has been a time or two when, for some reason, the time for which it was set had changed. Funny, I don’t remember changing the time and would have had no reason to do so. All I know is that, fortunately, I woke up on my own and realizing, “holy shit, the alarm didn’t go off!” and being relieved that my Circadian rhythm was reliable enough that morning. I check the time the alarm was set and sure enough, it has mysteriously been set an hour later. The only possibility I can think of is that perhaps on the previous morning while reaching for the snooze button or off button in the dark I happened to hit the two buttons that change the time the alarm is set, thereby advancing the hour inadvertently. The only other possibility is that one of my cats walked across the top of the clock and did the same thing.
Maybe you had cats at some point - I don’t know how often I’ve shut a cat in the bedroom because they slithered in while I was getting something out and didn’t notice them.
Mine is house keys. I’ve been known to pat myself down three or four times, and then go back in to check for them – naturally when I do this, it never registers that I’ve just used the keys I was worried about to unlock the door in order to open it. Until the people with me start laughing, anyway.
I lived for years in a dormitory where the doors would auto-lock behind you. The paranoia has yet to wear off.
I do the garage door thing. I’m usually thinking about so much while I’m getting ready for work and heading out the door that a lot of the routine stuff gets done on automatic pilot. Then I’ll get a block or two away and suddenly realize I had no memory of closing the garage door. So I’ll have to turn around and go back - and it’s always closed. It was left open once, though, and that’s all it takes for the fear to set in.
I solved the problem by making a game up with my daughter (I drop her off at schoool in the mornings) whereby we try to be the first to say, “Garage door’s closed!” when it closes. Now even if she’s not with me I never forget to check.