I Am Cleaning

-
I am cleaning,

I swear.

I come up with these crazy plans.

These obsessive-compulsive ideas that I cannot shake.

And this idea I have dubbed "The Fifty".

The Fifty is the number I have vowed I would undertake each day during the week of Thanksgiving, beginning today: the Saturday prior.

From my home I would purge myself of 50 things every day.

It started with twenty.

But then I realized it would be easy to cheat since each scrap of paper I rid this home of would count as one. You know all those scraps?  The receipts you thought "just in case" you should hold onto... the mail... the coupons from Kohl's latest flyer (that turned into the flyer from summer now past...), the work faxes and memos and other idle paper messes that need to get into the recycling bin, like, yesterday.

So 20 became 50, and I am intent on meeting that goal.

Any combination of unused toys and unworn clothes that will make it to Salvation Army, any fashion choices of yesteryear that I have spent too much time wondering if they would return to grace us again (except, I will never get rid of my cherry Doc Martens, Ef you very much.).

There are the novelty gifts many someones gave me with good intentions, like a penis shaped drinking straw (oh, how I'll miss you, perfectly good plastic penis!) and the dog and cat toys and one very adorable Santa costume that I bought for Penny for her first Christmas at our casa. She loathed me then, and I shall now pass that loathing on to another pet owner.

There're too many games in my closet, because I love a good game... but Lloyd doesn't like games and by the time Sayler loves games our edition of "Friends: Scene It" it will seem archaic and meaningless. I can hear her and her friends laughing at her old mommy now when I suggest it for their slumber party.

And though I swear she will know what "The Gellar Cup" signifies and she will adore Jennifer Aniston the way Ariel and I do, I am resigned to knowing this game will serve another family more happily until she finds a game more befitting of her generation.

But I am here, now sitting amongst my grand intentions and about twenty piles of stuff scattered among the rooms of my home and fifty is seeming like, you know, whatever is a lot more than fifty. 

I have officially reached that point where, in an effort to clean my home, I have made it anything but.

I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the stripped-down bed that is now holding lots of laundry, most of which is clean, some of which is wet because I own too many "hang-dry" only items (seriously, why must all of my favorite, prettiest items of clothing be so much work to wash?), and some of the laundry is for the Goodwill and some is for Ariel and some is to be passed on to my friends and now I officially can't breathe trying to remember where to put what where.

But I will get to my fifty today. So help me.

And it won't include my cherry Doc Martens... seriously... you're not getting them, so don't even bother asking.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Dear Bobby"

-
Image
"Dear Bobby, I love you. I always look forward to when my husband leaves for work, and you sneak into bed with me. Sometimes, you will wake me up, but usually, you just lie there next to me waiting for my eyes to open." Bobby. You are a cat. But you are the cat of all cats. Unliked some others whose names I will not mention.... you like being a cat. You are my original Obi Kenobi... But you don't like your name and insist I call you "Bobby" or "Bob". You are my predator. You can catch anything- including a rabbit almost twice your size. I remember the time you brought a baby possum into our home. I had just awakened and sleepily headed to use the bathroom when, peering from inside the toilet, was a little possum begging to be released. You cheeky bastard, Bobby. That poor possum. I scolded you and you just turned the other whisker, as if to say "look lady... I am a cat, that's how I do...." The other cats beg for forgiveness when ...
Read More

The Good Dancer: A Dating Story

-
Image
I once dated a really good dancer. That wasn't his only strength. In truth, he was one of thee absolute best dudes I ever made out with.  He was super funny, smart and we clicked right away. But what struck me as odd was that, for the first time before and since, his good dancing skills didn't turn me off.  (For some reason, a man with too much swagger on the floor has always confused and frightened me a little.)  Oh, and I also don't like when they are so involved in their dancing that they forget you are on the floor with them.  Oh, and when they A. crowd you or B. use you as a prop.  Oh, and when they sing along to songs by female artists.  If you know all the lyrics to "I'm a Slave for You", that's both impressive and embarrassing. (I really did have strange deal-breakers with men...) So here was the first guy who I enjoyed dancing with that was actually a really good dancer.  He didn't crowd.  He didn't sweat profusely.  H...
Read More

Degree

-
Image
It was on Friday night. We laughed a lot, perhaps made delirious by the sweet smell of men that were familiar-yet-elusive and desirable. It could have been the wine,  it could have been the great company of old friends and conversations and shared opinions with other women. I disagreed with Ariel more than once, though... "Too sweet" or.... "smells like a jelly bean...." The ones I couldn't put down were the ones that smelled like a man's deodorant, hidden among 75+ samples that scattered in baskets around the coffee table. There we sat around a table full of scents as we sampled the fragrances from a friend's Scentsy collection, eager to fill out our order forms for the smells that would soon promise to envelop our homes. I opted for the "Iced Pine" option, which always reminds me of the home I have not yet lived in and lingered around the fragrances that smelled of citrus and orange peels.  The idea of the smell of "Orange...
Read More