"Candlesticks Always Make A Nice Gift..."
My Mandy is coming to visit tomorrow. My Mandy and I became friends on a seventh grade field trip to Discovery Place, when we discovered that the mutual dislike we had been harboring for the previous year was the product of a rumor fabricated by some Mean Girl whose motives have been lost to the history of middle school.
And that was it. She's my Person. We were band geeks together in high school. Drinking buddies in college. I wore a purple bridesmaid's dress at her wedding-- also the last documented instance of my wearing heels. I was at the hospital the night her first son was born. Neither of her children seem to know I'm not actually a blood relative.
My will (Yes, I have one. That was a fun Saturday night activity.) stipulates that she will be the one to obtain and dispose of my journals. So, yes, that means this is the person I trust, in the event of my death, to take care of all the stuff too profane for me to write about here.
This woman knows where twenty-five years worth of bodies are buried.*
This visit is kind of a big deal because it will be My Mandy's first visit to Little Blue. So this means cleaning. Not just day-to-day get-the-dishes-out-of-the-sink, vacuum-up-the-cat hair cleaning. This is full-scale dust-the-ceiling-fans, scrub-the-bathtub cleaning.
You know it's serious when I get down on hands and knees and scrub the bathtub.
And it has to be done because I am possibly the world's worst housekeeper. I shouldn't be. My mother is the second most fastidious person I've ever known, and she was raised by the first. I own the entire collection of Swiffer products. I have a range of sprays and powders which, although green, are pretty powerful. I have a Shark, and a Dyson DC-14 "Animal". I am equipped to keep this place in a condition rivaled only by the best operating rooms in the country.
Furthermore, Southern women are supposed to keep a clean house,but I am an affront to all they hold sacred because I have balls of dust under my bed that can no longer reasonably be called "dust bunnies". They're more on the scale of mid-sized farm animals.
Or they were until I vacuumed them up this weekend.
Despite what I've said about The Great Purge and my fear of reality television, though, I'm not a hoarder. I just don't get all in a twist if the laundry doesn't get done today. I don't really worry about vacuuming until the cat starts sneezing because she is allergic to herself. I don't think about the dishes until I run out of forks.
I figure it doesn't bother anyone but me, and there are just other more interesting things to do. There are books to read, yarn to weave, friends to meet, passport stamps to collect, heavy bags to kick, money to lose at craps tables, inane blogs to be written. In the words of Crash Davis, "We're dealing with a lot of shit."
* The bodies are metaphorical. I may know how to kill a man; doesn't mean I've actually done it.
My Mandy is coming to visit tomorrow. My Mandy and I became friends on a seventh grade field trip to Discovery Place, when we discovered that the mutual dislike we had been harboring for the previous year was the product of a rumor fabricated by some Mean Girl whose motives have been lost to the history of middle school.
And that was it. She's my Person. We were band geeks together in high school. Drinking buddies in college. I wore a purple bridesmaid's dress at her wedding-- also the last documented instance of my wearing heels. I was at the hospital the night her first son was born. Neither of her children seem to know I'm not actually a blood relative.
My will (Yes, I have one. That was a fun Saturday night activity.) stipulates that she will be the one to obtain and dispose of my journals. So, yes, that means this is the person I trust, in the event of my death, to take care of all the stuff too profane for me to write about here.
This woman knows where twenty-five years worth of bodies are buried.*
This visit is kind of a big deal because it will be My Mandy's first visit to Little Blue. So this means cleaning. Not just day-to-day get-the-dishes-out-of-the-sink, vacuum-up-the-cat hair cleaning. This is full-scale dust-the-ceiling-fans, scrub-the-bathtub cleaning.
You know it's serious when I get down on hands and knees and scrub the bathtub.
And it has to be done because I am possibly the world's worst housekeeper. I shouldn't be. My mother is the second most fastidious person I've ever known, and she was raised by the first. I own the entire collection of Swiffer products. I have a range of sprays and powders which, although green, are pretty powerful. I have a Shark, and a Dyson DC-14 "Animal". I am equipped to keep this place in a condition rivaled only by the best operating rooms in the country.
Furthermore, Southern women are supposed to keep a clean house,but I am an affront to all they hold sacred because I have balls of dust under my bed that can no longer reasonably be called "dust bunnies". They're more on the scale of mid-sized farm animals.
Or they were until I vacuumed them up this weekend.
Despite what I've said about The Great Purge and my fear of reality television, though, I'm not a hoarder. I just don't get all in a twist if the laundry doesn't get done today. I don't really worry about vacuuming until the cat starts sneezing because she is allergic to herself. I don't think about the dishes until I run out of forks.
I figure it doesn't bother anyone but me, and there are just other more interesting things to do. There are books to read, yarn to weave, friends to meet, passport stamps to collect, heavy bags to kick, money to lose at craps tables, inane blogs to be written. In the words of Crash Davis, "We're dealing with a lot of shit."
* The bodies are metaphorical. I may know how to kill a man; doesn't mean I've actually done it.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment