I’ve been here before.
One of the (admittedly few) nice things about my job is the school calendar.
I cannot complain about the time off.
Especially today.
Smile.
Especially today.
I’m on day three of a nine day wonder.
Another full week off of work here in the land of Mardi Gras.
“Hey Mister! Throw me a full week of anything but work!”
But it’s not time to waste.
That would be foolish.
This break
(as with so many before)
I am vowing to myself to make a real effort
at my own impossible dream
- the cleaning and organizing of my immediate environs.
Yes, I want to set things aright,
put everything in its place
even though so many things here really have no official place.
So it’s a bit more complicated than just straightening up,
just cleaning up.
It’s a series of first things and second things and third things first
before I really get back to doing first things.
Can’t just sweep the floor in the study yet
because it doesn’t just all go out with the trash.
There are the kitten-dragged socks to fish out from under the bookcases
and the hundreds of perfectly usable beads to sift out of
(and clean of)
the general dirt and
(omg! the sheer tonnage of )
cat hair
because the cat rampages dump everything,
every single thing not nailed down,
onto and bouncingly randomly throughout the house.
Sweeping is not just sweep.
It’s sweep,
then curse as I get down to the ground
(in the strange slow process it takes me to get down to the floor)
and sift into three boxes - dirt, beads, and anything else that isn’t to be tossed,
then curse as I rise
(in the strange slow process it takes me to get up off the floor),
then clean the beads and non-tossables,
then curse a bit more
and move on…
Definitely a process that takes some working myself into.
Can’t change the sheets on the bed in the front room
(where I used to sleep, now the cat’s favourite napping lounge)
because of the huge fan
that used to hang from the ceiling
but fell off dramatically
- what? that doesn’t happen in your house? -
a year, maybe two by now, ago.
(Three separate handy-men have found reasons that it can be rehung,
but just - not - now.)
Damn thing’s absolutely my favourite fixture in the whole house,
but heavy as hell,
Even though I’d like to put it back in the rear storage room
(which used to be the actual bedroom,
but which I now use as a large closet
because it’s uninsulated and, therefore, uninhabitable),
I really can’t lift it myself.
(Break a couple of vertebrae just one time
and you spend the rest of your life belly-aching
about pain and disability
like a wuss.
Go freaking figure!)
Speaking of the former ceiling fan, now decorative bed monument,
and of lacks of insulation…
There is that big old hole in the ceiling
through which I know vast amounts of hot or cold air
(whichever is not wanted)
enter my house on a constant basis
(kinda like the gap the house flippers left behind the refrigerator
where the floor and the wall should meet).
I do have the ladder in the front room.
(Fret not.
We’ll tie this seeming tangent in to the hole in the ceiling sometime this afternoon.)
Okay, before everything, I needed light in the front room
and the only bulb left in the room after the ceiling fan and its light kit fell
was the foyer light
which burnt out some weeks ago.
But I have an adversarial relationship with gravity
(it’s gone all aggressive and carnivorous when it comes to me)
and am somewhat afraid of climbing on things.
(Break your freaking back squatting while gardening and you start to realize that the normal rules guiding the universe no longer apply to you.)
Anyway, Nathe was supposed to change that bulb for me
because he likes to ‘save’ me from those things I ‘can’t’ do anymore.
Except Nathe hasn’t been speaking to me for several weeks now
(Well, at least that’s one good thing come of this ‘so-called’ president of ours.
((He’s more so-called than the judge he so-called first.))
By simply allowing Nathe to get me to talk politically about the great orange one,
I can guarantee my trump-without-money brother will stop speaking to me until I take pity on him and his isolation and rebuild the bridge between us.)
and though the silence is lovely, the front room’s been pretty dark.
So I wrestled the (damnably heavy) ladder from the bedroom/big closet room
into the front room
(Can you say oxycodone for dessert?)
and climbed the (scary scary scary) rungs to replace the bulb.
And I must say, I am very proud of myself
because I not only managed to get the ornery cover off
the ancient 0light fixture without breaking it
but I also remembered to climb down from the ladder
and check to be certain that the bulb actually worked
before putting the cover back on the fixture.
(Learned that one from an experience I will not recount here.)
(It’s not polite of you to say ‘Thank you’ at this point.)
But the ladder’s there in the front room now
And the hole where once the ceiling fan hung is there
And I thought,
Well, I’ve been brave
and I climbed the (scary scary scary) rungs of the metal Matterhorn
(Twice!)
yesterday,
surely it’s time,
surely I have proven that I have the intestinal fortitude to climb once more
no matter how shaky my knees
surely I can take that brightly coloured scarf
(that’s just been hanging around on the ironing board in the bedroom/big storage closet
for an embaraasingly long time)
and pin it by its corners
over the gaping (shaming) hole in the ceiling.
It would look better (and also somewhat pathetic)
and I wouldn’t have to see the hole into the attic.
I could pretend that the beautiful gauzy square of silk
(that I have never actually found myself able to wear)
is protection against the attic temperatures
(and the mythical creatures who thrive up there).
But, I’ve just looked on the (huge jumble of stuff on the) ironing board
and I can’t find the scarf
(which would probably need ironing after all this time)
(of course, the ironing board would have to be excavated to iron the scarf…).
Spent twenty minutes looking for the scarf, to no avail.
I know it’s in there somewhere, somewhere…
Facepalm!
I know what happened to the scarf.
I was walking through the bedroom/big storage closet room the other day
and decided that the scarf, after all this time on the ironing board,
needed to be put away.
So I put it away, finally.
And I have absolutely no idea where
because I really don’t have an official place where scarves go
in this storage-desert of a house.
And so it goes in my quest to clean and organize my life and environs.
These are but a few things
of the massive multitude of things that need done
and the massiver multitude of things that need done
before the massive multitude of things can be done.
People have no idea why I am such a poor house keeper.
They think - well, damn -
Just freaking clean up the house
And be happier.
They - have - no - idea.
And this was all a diversionary tactic so that I could put off
doing the next load of laundry.
Don’t get me started on what needs doing in the laundry room.
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