Day Seven - Home Maintenance and Pretty Lights

 Still unseasonably warm. I was planning to spend the day painting, but Matt wanted to do some patching and filling (more than he wanted to show me how to do it), so I spent a couple of hours doing other tidying jobs and then went to have dinner and hang out in a friend's back yard because hello, 21 degrees in November (this afternoon I was feeling happy that everyone else was so happy but not really thrilled with experiencing underboob sweat the month before Christmas, but it's very pleasant for the evenings). 

I have a very basic IKEA bedside table against the closet door that doesn't open where I have four stacks of books that don't have another home. I've realized that about twice a year I have an inexplicable manic surge of energy for cleaning, reorganizing and purging that disappears as fast as it comes, so I have to capitalize on this odd phenomenon while I can. Today I actually picked out more than a dozen books to get rid of, and then dusted the books from the little table before sorting which ones can fill in the empty places on the bookshelves.

Pro tip: books get VERY VERY GROSSLY DUSTY when you stack them instead of shelving them. Oof. The dust bunnies. The sneezing and wheezing. 

On the bright side, I found a book, far down one of the stacks, that I went to a book launch for, met the very nice author who was a friend of a friend, and then promptly lost for five years when I got home. I was torn between feeling happy and disgusted with myself, which is something that invariably accompanies these twice yearly bouts of Tasmanian devil-like housekeeping. For the rest of the year I just walk around happily oblivious to the squalor. Then suddenly it's all FRONT AND CENTER IN VIVID HD and I'm like WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? ARE WE ANIMALS? THIS WILL NOT STAND. While the rest of the family hides and waits for the inevitable return of my usual blinders.

Then I read for a bit, then I picked up Pad Thai from a Vietnamese restaurant (I'm quirky like that) and went to my friend's backyard where we sat on the patio wrapped in fuzzy blankets and talked about our awesome children, people we like, people we don't like, horny adolescent rabbits and horses, narcoleptic and otherwise.

It was a really good day. 


Comments

StephLove said…
My shelved books are super dusty, too. I guess that's what happens when you (almost) never dust them.
We had that nice weather for like, five days, and now it's back to severe wind warnings and snow. It was great while it lasted.
Ernie said…
Under-boob sweat month before Christmas is unfortunate, but I'm still embracing the weirdly warm weather we are having in Chicago. I essentially still wear a training bra, so that might be part of why I am not bothered.

Glad to know I am not alone in my inconsistent house cleaning tasks. I do most of my books from the library, so I don't need to dust books . . . its just everything else. When I go hard core 'let's get this place cleaned up' my kids look around bewildered and ask if we are having people over. As if cleaning the house is only necessary when we have visitors.

Glad you had such an enjoyable day.
Suz said…
Inexplicable bouts of energy are the best. Sadly, they never linger....unlike underboob sweat. It's almost all year round in Florida.
Smothermother said…
I have the same manic cleaning and purging episodes. Max and Marty know to hide all the things they want to keep because if it ain’t nailed down, it’s outta here.

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