Busy Busy Busy Bizzzzeeeeeeeeee
The strange thing about cleaning .... you go through distinct stages:
pretending you can't see the dirt
don't wanna
oh god it looks murky
counting the dead insects
measuring how many weeks dead insects can hold on to a ceiling tile after death
pathetic attempts with a bit of tissue
realisation that it's making it look worse
pretending it's a political issue; one must make more of one's leisure time than to be some twentieth century slave to a 50's perception of 'clean'
neat bleach (the gay male /Dutch readers will know what I mean)
realisation that it's making it look worse
getting out the scary products to do it properly
railing against the crappy builders who never bothered to clean the stray grouting from the tiles three years back
realising this particular rantation means you haven't wiped down the bathroom wall / kitchen floor for three years now
aiming to do too much (ie, begins to retile the bathroom)
trying harder, for ten minutes, to get the filth off
burning the skin off your hands because you forgot that scary products need gloves
pride and industriousness
realisation that it's making it look worse
deciding that those ten minutes are more than you've done for three years, so of course it's enough to stop there
clearing up the steaming chemical mess from the floor
blackmailing family to provide you with several hours of cup-of-tea-related servitude in honour of your unerring will and derring do in the face of a bit of grime
realisation that the contrast of the bit you did with the bit you gave up on, makes it look worse
pretending you can't see the dirt
I have to clean the flat because a load of women* who all have cleaner fingernails than me are coming round for a kinda reunion on Saturday, and if anyone realises the true extent of my filth, they'll point and laugh.
*- and one bloke (Chris, whose blog is over there < = on the blogroll), but his fingernails look pretty manky to me, so he's not such a threat.
Besides which, whenever DH goes away, I have to tidy endlessly, to prove that I'm not the utterly filthy one.

It's two weeks into my holidays now, and it's time I started getting out of bed before 4 in the afternoon, attempting to achieve something from the day, and avoiding drinking every single evening, simply to change the pace.
Updated: Friday, 1 August 2003 7:54 PM BST
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