Cleaning

Today is a holiday for the California State University system, so Rene has the day off. And since I'm treading the fine freelance line between self-employed and unemployed, I worked a little bit this morning and I'm going to spend the day with him. He's leaving for Hawai'i on Thursday, so I won't see him for almost two weeks. Anywho, after I got done writing one of the articles I did this morning, I looked around and had a little tiny freakout.

Enough is enough, I thought. It is time. Time to clean.

People who know me know that I'm not an extraordinarily clean person. I mean, I shower daily and wash my face and teeth, but that's about the extent of my grooming. And I take my philosophy on cleaning my apartment from Angels in America (badly paraphrased): This is messy, not dirty. Messy is papers and clothes strewn about. Messy is a pile of books about to topple over. Dirty is a plate with stuff growing on or food decomposing on the ground. Messy is fine. Dirty is not.

So, anywho, I was looking around Rene's room, and he is even messier than I am. So, I started cleaning. And, although I've never seen it, I'm told that it's a beautiful, somewhat scary sight to see me clean. I attack cleaning with the attitude of a bulimic with her eye on the prom: the more I purge, the closer I am to the prize. I just finished doing his desk and the corner it sits in and I have a trashbag full. And, to top it off, I dusted. Catie and Dot, please don't pass out.

My penchant for throwing things away comes from moving a lot as a child. If you don't want to haul it several hundred miles, throw it away. It's not worth keeping. But also (and this isn't true today), I love cleaning when I'm angry or stressed. It gives me an iota of control when I'm feeling helpless. Other times, though, a switch just gets hit in my head. And it's time.

Time to clean.