Don’t drink and clean

Ever see that historic moment vignette about women getting the vote?¹ The bit I always remember about it is not the classic “Nice women don’t want the vote” line,² but rather when the trusty narrator says, “It did not go well for Mrs. McClung.”⁴

So... I decided to have a glass of wine while cleaning the kitchen yesterday.

It did not go well for Mrs. Reid.

It started out innocently enough. I waded through the stacks of dirty dishes, got the first load in the dishwasher, hosed down one busy counter and started rearranging things in the fridge. I decided to organize and replenish the juice boxes, so I grabbed the cello-wrapped pack of Five Alive from that one clean counter, jabbed a hole in the packaging, then struggled mightily to get the stupid thing open. And, when it opened, oh boy, did it open—busting apart sending juice boxes flying in every possible direction. One ambitious⁵ box kamikazied for the aforementioned wine, sending the glass spinning and tumbling in spectacular lawn-sprinkler-like⁶ fashion.

To which I responded, “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? THIS is EXACTLY why I don’t clean!”

The area where the wine—spilled just doesn’t do it justice, so let’s go with—EXPLODED is the stupidest corner in our very small house of unusual spaces. It’s a catchall counter that faces the side of the fridge, which is less than a foot away. The lower cupboard’s doors had to be jerry-rigged with hinges in the middle because the space is too small to open them straight out. It’s a perfect place to put the cat’s food and water.⁷ However, because I can only wedge myself in there sideways, it is an absolute horror to clean. I can’t tell you how much time I spent wiping up the GD mess, because I think the part of my brain in charge of telling time was the precise part I kept poking with the idiot fudgestick.⁸

At any rate, it took a very long time to clean.⁹ So long, in fact, that I decided that I had had quite enough for one day and I gave up. That’s fair, right?

So here’s an interesting side lesson: you know how some things turn green and mouldy when they go bad? Remember how I was organizing the fridge? Well, I had taken a huge bowl of leftover macaroni out and placed it on the counter (thankfully not the crime-scene counter) and, since I had given up, there it sat. Till the next day.¹⁰ Imagine my surprise when I discovered the macaroni had, in that short time, started to ferment!

Noodle wine anyone?¹¹

*************************************

1. I'd provide a link to YouTube, but every few months our YouTube shuts down all the other open programs and freezes the computer. We forget it’s happening for about a week and have to keep rebooting, then we remember and complain bitterly for a week about it because—hey, who wants to live without YouTube, am I right? Then we accidentally fix it but can never remember how. Then a few months later, every time we click on YouTube we end up having to reboot, lather, scream, repeat...

2. Other classic lines that only fellow Canadians who watch waaaaay too much TV would appreciate:
“Patience, Jenny. Patience!” (Make sure you spit a little and rip off someone’s fig leaf.)
“Burnt...Toast... Dr. Penfield! I Smell...Burnt...Toast...!”
“The train!”
“Persons, under the law.”
“ka-NAAAAH-da,” point, point.
And, of course, “No one’s going to read a story about a man in tights, Joey! It'll never fly!” As we, once again, in typically Canadian fashion, grasp desperately to be linked with something that’s famous in America.³

3. Please note, this list was created without the assistance of YouTube OR Google. Permanently. Etched. I’m pretty sure if Dr. Penfield poked the brains of Canadians-of-a-certain-age, we wouldn’t be going on about pouring cold water on our hands but would instead start spouting these vignettes by heart.

4. Or Mrs. MacPhail. Or whichever important change-making Canadian woman was featured in this one.

5. Malicious?

6. You know—the three-pronged twirly one. Maximum lawn-soaking coverage. Perfect.

7.  In a related story, Snowdrop has been a little stumbly-Jack lately. Hope she doesn’t get the DTs when she finishes this wine-soaked batch of kibble.

8. Anyone have Dr. Penfield’s number?

9. When hubby and daughter returned from their several-hour-sojourn-out-to-give-mommy-a-chance-to-clean adventure, they’re like, “WTF? Why is it still a mess here? What have you been doing?!?” Sniff, sniff. “Oh nevermind. Obviously you needed to get hammered instead. Lush.”

10. I know, you’re shocked.

11. Note to self—no cleaning!

Can someone PLEASE get this sticker off my ass?

Know what’s funnier than a dog chasing its tail?

A cat chasing its tail. Seriously. Cats are smart,¹ so it doesn’t happen that often. But my cat got a sticker stuck on her tail recently and spent a full half hour in a white-and-gray blur of fluffy frustration, chasing and chasing a petite piece of post-it that was making her unclean, dammit!²

So, today, as I look around my hovel, I have to wonder,⁴ is there someone out in the cosmos⁶ ROTFLHAO⁷ as I run around and around and around getting, well, nowhere? I mean, I’m smarter than a cat, right? Or, at least, a dog?

Maybe it was the frustration of two snow days in a row.⁸ There’s certainly a missing housework chromosome or six. But I swear I spent so much time taking a step and saying “I should do this now,” then turning around and saying “No, I should do that now,” then turning towards something else and saying, “No that is definitely the priority,” that I got precious few of the one million⁹ things that needed to get done this week, done. I literally¹⁰ found myself running around in circles. Chasing the post-it notes from my massive colour-coded to-do-list board that had somehow gotten stuck to my ass.¹¹ Ugh.¹²

So, do me a favour. Help me climb up the evolutionary scale a wee bit and, if you see a post-it note on my ass, just take it off, OK? Or clean my house. Or make my kid’s lunch. Or write my article. Or pay my bills. Or get my kid’s skates sharpened. Or pitch my story. Or shovel my driveway. Or finish my novel. Or attend my seminar. Or...

I think I’m gonna lose my kibble...

********************************************
1. My loyalty in the cat/dog dichotomy of life becomes blaringly obvious right—here.

2. I eventually stopped laughing long enough to take it off for her—I was worried her head would explode or she’d chuck her kibble.³

3. And, lest you think I am the kind sort, I later I tried to duplicate the scenario for others by sticking something on kitty’s tail. Didn’t work—I couldn’t find that one little inaccessible sweetspot of hilarity, and, as mentioned, cats are smart.

4. With apologies—I’m certainly not cool enough to channel Carrie Bradshaw, but sometimes I have to pay homage.⁵

5. Go ahead—you know you want to say it out loud... “Homage.”

6. A totally accidental homage to SATC. Mmmm, cosmos. Ohhh-maggge. Hom-idge.

7. Rolling on the floor laughing her ass off. Pre-empting Muzzah's inevitable question.

8. The fact that I invited four little girls (in addition to my one) into my house on the first snow day makes me seriously question my place on the mammal smartness hierarchy. A cat would NEVER do that. A dog definitely would, though.

9. Figures rounded to the nearest ten.

10. I am using this term correctly, my friends.

11. That was figurative. Well, the board is real. But, they were figuratively stuck to my—oh, I don’t need to explain this, do I?

12. Is the ridiculous number of notes making you feel like you’re reading in circles? Sorry—I just didn’t want to feel alone here between the pets.

One Tack at a Time… or Why I Haven’t Been Blogging

I just organized my thumb tacks¹ into the pretty ones I really like (neat purples and turquoises and corals and such) and the boring standard utilitarian ones you see everywhere (primary colours and greens and whites). I then put them in these neat hexagonal glass jars that are soooo cute. And I’m recycling because the jars are from a spice set I got a while back: as I empty the jars I clean them out. This takes a fair bit of time.² For months I have had little groups of colourful things (like thumb tacks) cluttering my workspace, just waiting for new homes in the charming-and-someday-to-be-cleaned jars. So, today, what I am really doing is organizing and reducing clutter and recycling and beautifying.³

And why not? It’s not like I have much on the go. All I have to do is finish a massive copy edit that has taken waaaay longer than I ever thought possible⁴, write several articles, chase other people to interview… You know—things that will eventually result in me earning money. The sooner I get them done, the sooner I get said money and can look for more work. There’s also that drafted novel that needs finalizing to go out to agents/publishers. And the new novel I’m four chapters into writing…

So what am I doing? Well, the boys in Cameron House had a charming term for it: fucking the dog.⁵ Wasting time. Making dining reservations for my trip to Disney next month. Sorting thumb tacks.

What is wrong with me?

As Ron Weasley put it, “She needs to sort out her priorities.”*

Sigh. One of my priorities is to blog more regularly.

Right after I find the coloured paperclips that go in the other (finally) clean hexagonal jar… They were on my desk yesterday…

Hmmm—this could take a while…
***************************************************
1. The Canadian Oxford has thumbtack as one word. I don’t like it. (This in no way changes my deeper-and-gushier-than-a-BP-oilrig love I have for my CanOx though...)

2. Because the labels are practically soldered on, I have to soak the jars, then scrape them, then soak the jars again, then scrape them again, and since there are always dishes in my sink waiting to go in the dishwasher, the stuff that can’t go in the dishwasher sits on the counter waiting to be washed in the sink once the sink gets empty, which doesn’t generally happen till my daughter wants to have something in her thermos for lunch and I have to clean it so I make an extra-special effort to empty the blasted always-full sink—only then can I soak the jars. So when I say a fair bit of time, I mean several months.

3. I mentioned how sweet these little jars are, right? And hexagonal?

4. And I haven’t even gotten to the 450 footnotes—450! Fifty pages of 10-point, single-spaced, name- and number-crammed detail! And not fun detail like in my footnotes. Nooooooo.

5. Obviously this term is meant figuratively, but can’t you just picture terrified Cameron frosh losing sleep dreading a Welsh/New-Zealander-sheep-style coming-of-age initiation ritual?

6. Ron made this comment after Hermione said they could get killed, or worse—expelled. I might not get work done, or worse—I might have a mix of cool and uncool thumb tacks in the same jar. Sorted priorities, indeed…