Take Me Down To The Infirmary

I'm feeling better today. Much less "it hurts when I breathe." Peak flows inching upward, starting to taper down the prednisone tomorrow; it's all coming together. Being in my house without our maid Tena has caused me to realize that I have gone completely insane. Why do I think my house has to be so clean? It really doesn't. To some degree, it's just much more soothing to be sick in a tidy room, and so I have to cut my self a little slack on the bustling around in my own bedroom. But the other stuff? Why did I clean the toilets the day after I got home from the hospital? (I must say in my defense that the water levels in Asian toilets are very low, and little kids are unlikely to give the bowl a quick swipe after doing a poo, with predictable results.) I remember way back when we were discussing housekeeping issues and gender disparity, one commenter suggested she spent 2-3 hours a day doing housework. Most people thought this was crazy, and couldn't even imagine what she could think she was doing all that time. Sadly, I can easily think of 2-3 hours of stuff. Stuff like mopping the kitchen floor every night, or getting and preparing food, or laundry, or ironing, or putting $^&^ing Old English Oil on the wood furniture. Or washing all the dishes, drying and putting them away, and then washing and drying the sink itself. Mmm, shining clean sink, so soothing. Perfect time to microwave the damp sponge, too. The thing is, I'm much less crazy when I go home to the states; I do get accused of bustling around, but I often let my own bedroom get pretty untidy. I think it's partly just that it seems that a modicum of continued effort could keep my apartment in its current (astounding, ridiculous) state of cleanliness. I'm hoping the rest of it is the combination of prednisone and various powerful types of speed. I remember when I had pneumonia once in Berkeley and was on 60mg of the Predator and John came into the kitchen at 2am to find me cleaning the knobs on the stove. I had torn off tiny strips of Formula 409-soaked paper towels, wrapped them around the ends of toothpicks, and was removing the accumulated grime of the ages from the grooves running along the knobs. So, yeah, it's the drugs, right? If I've really gone this 50s housewife on myself I've got biiiiigg problems. John, earlier tonight, with incredulity: "why are you making cupcakes for Zoë's class?" I promise I really did rest a lot, and one of my friends' helper came over and did lots of stuff and watched the girls. And it was the easiest kind of cupcakes I know how to make, (she said triumphantly, and yet with a feeling that she was missing something important.) Mom, don't kill me.

UPDATE: I should add that this isn't about me overdoing it with stuff I'm too tired for, though of course there's a little of that, but rather that I thought it seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea to have someone come clean my house today, even though someone else is coming to do it Sunday. How clean does the damn house have to be, really? OTOH (lying on clean sheets, gazing about at order, delicious jasmine oil in the oil burner) it looks fabulous around here.

Comments

[dgm]

not to bring this down by speaking of death, but will you go to your maker wishing you had cleaned just a little more? do you want your loved ones to remember you most for how clean you kept the stove?

just askin'. i come from the minimalist school of "clean enough."

come on. set yourself free!

[Becks]

Glad to hear you're feeling a little bit better! Take care of yourself!

[Another Duncan]

I'm more from the Quentin Crisp school of cleaning:

"There is no need to do housework. After about four years the dirt doesn't get any worse. It's simply a question of not losing one's nerve."

[Rob Helpy-Chalk]

Get well soon!

Stop cleaning!

[Nakku]

Don't make me drag you out to the museum again! Because I will if I have to.
Seriously Belle, unless I see some evidence that bustling around with cleaning products is good for respiratory ailments, I'm going to have to implore you to cut that shit out, pronto.

[jim]

It still comes as a shock whenever I discover an otherwise intelligent person, someone I've met, someone real to me, who doesn't share my standards of cleanliness.

I'm not shocked by different intellectual interests, nor different sexual tastes, just different standards of cleanliness.

I put this down to being exposed, at an impressionable age, to television ads for cleaning materials and recognizing the people in the ads as irretrievably other.

[Betty Boop]

i say clean if it makes you feel better, my good woman. housework and baking can be oh-so-soothing. glad to know you're feeling better.

[bitchphd]

God, I am so envious. My house, in contrast, has a piece of chicken on the dining room table that's been there for two days, a couple places where the cat puked and I threw down some stain remover and left it to finish "tomorrow," bathroom sinks so cluttered it's hard to brush your teeth without knocking shit over, and piles of clean and dirty laundry intermingling all over the bedroom.