Game, Set, Match

My son has figured out how to make his Spiderman Operation game buzz continuously by wedging the little pincher into one of the holes, snugged up to the metal edges. Then he grins at me and covers his ears. "Cover your ears, Mommy!" He usually does this when I'm trying to get some work done.

Lately we've been playing checkers, and he plays within the regular rules for approximately one game, give or take a few moves. After that, it's his rules. I never win, no matter which set of rules we are using.

Another game, one he just made up the other day, is called "Guess What?" It goes like this:

-Guess what?
-What?
-No, guess.
-Um, your feet are ticklish.
-No.
-Yes they are.
-No, that's not it, guess, Mommy!
-It's bedtime.
-No.
-Yes it is, though.
-You have to guess three times.
-It's getting dark.
-No!
-Okay that was three guesses.
-No, you have to guess four times.
- insert guess
-You have to guess five times.
-insert guess
-You have to guess previous number plus one times.
etc, ad infinitum ...

The Bad Girl's Guide to De-cluttering*

1. move piles from one cluttered area of the house to another cluttered area
2. 'organize' other people's stuff - easier to pitch their sentimental crap than it is to release your own
3. put the stuff you are giving away in the trunk of your car and drive around with it until you decide you need it again
4. throw your unwanted stuff over the neighbour's fence** in the dead of night (when there's no moon***)
5. burn it! especially if burning it will release nasty fumes! yeah!

*I'm a bad, bad girl, but even I can't endorse these suggestions - who posted this!? - JG
** Pls note: make sure it doesn't include junk mail with your name and address on it - duh!
*** This is super bad - note the pagan content

Don't let them bite

I spent Mother's Day in a way that is perhaps not typical.

My son was at his dad's place Saturday night, so I slept in (big time) and read Jane Eyre a bit and drank copious amounts of coffee and tried out my new bubble bath.

But then...

Gradually over the course of the morning, in emailing back and forth with my ex-husband about some little red itchy bumps I had noted on our son's skin a few days earlier, in watching lurid youtube videos and googling both sites and images for the keyword 'bedbugs' - I became paranoidally convinced that the house was infested.

This freaked me out and...

I spent the rest of the day in a frenzy of laundering every piece of fabric in the house, inspecting mattresses and boxsprings, vacuuming... and freaking out ever more.

I can't explain it - I didn't find any evidence of bedbugs, but the more I tore the place apart and laundered things, the more of a state I got into, and the more convinced I became that the little beasts were there and were somehow tricking me! I found one bug, which is not a bedbug, but I sealed it into a little plastic container to show to dad-of-son when he came for the drop-off, just because I felt that I needed someone else to say "Jen - this is not a bedbug".

Have I mentioned that I might have a bit of a phobic feeling when it comes to bugs? Not full-blown phobia, but several steps along that road. Bugs that suck your blood in the dead of night are kind of the ultimate horror. I started thinking about the vampire myths, I bet you anything that the concept of vampires is based on bed bugs, because, listen: leave you with tiny red puncture wounds (frequently in a line as they follow a vein), only come out at night and shun daylight, suck blood, invisible (practically) and difficult/impossible to eradicate...

Okay, denouement - dad-of-son brought pizza over and inspected all the mattresses, looked at the poor little bug in the container, said "Jen - this is not a bedbug. And I don't think you have them." My son took over the vacuuming and fastidiously vacuumed every crack, crevice and bit of fluff he could reach. I put the hot, freshly laundered sheets on the beds, and the three of us ate a huge pizza. Then we played some tunes and pretended we were flying in outer space.

I don't have bedbugs, my house is extraordinarily clean and smells of fresh laundry, my boy is soundly sleeping - and I'm happy. So I guess this was a happy mother's day!

Housecleaning

I've been going through a bit of a low period, and I know there is a relationship between this moodiness and the housework issue. I always wonder if the house has slipped into chaos because of the emotional slide, or whether it's the chaos of the house (a gradual accumulation of mess, through attention going to things OTHER than regular housework) that causes the mood(s). I don't think it's a simple either/or. It's what I would term a dynamic relationship.

I just finished re-reading one of my favourite novels, Elisabeth Harvor's All Times Have Been Modern. It's a favourite because of Harvor's excellent writing. It was simply a bonus for me (in the take-comfort department) that the main character, Kay, is a 'slovenly' housekeeper. I was even a bit smug about the fact that, if my mother visits and opens my kitchen cupboards, she's likely to see pots and pans rather than, "A hairbrush and a mitten. And three library books. All overdue. Plus a teacup with petrified cornflakes dried on the inside of it." Kay overhears Idona reporting this on the phone to Henry, soon to become Idona's husband number three.

This is a roundabout approach to the following news: my house is substantially cleaner! All the public areas, plus my child's bedroom, are neat, organized and shiny. Not only that, but we are actively reminding ourselves (and each other) to PUT THINGS AWAY. What's that Buddhist thing-a-ma-jig: Clean up after yourself. (You know what I mean, there are six 'rules', like Be content. and Accept what is.) I'm particularly proud of the toy organization (and purging) that led to this wonderful state. Baskets from the dollar store played a key part.

It's true that clearing the decks and getting rid of unnecessary clutter frees one up on both physical and mental planes - which is why the next stage of project housework - my home office - will be a particularly satisfying accomplishment...

Night Thoughts

Well, I keep swearing that I will get a good solid chunk of sleep every night.

However, that was before I discovered that people post entire tv shows to youtube. Hello, ANTM (Yes, guilty as charged).

And now... I have Qtv playing, an interview with Leonard Cohen. So far, he has talked about what he does when he comes home (change the lightbulbs), about starting a music career in his mid-thirties (inspiring!), about liking women's voices and finding his own voice disgusting, about writing songs, about death a few times... now they're talking about death some more.

I'm not thinking about death so much as housework. My house is a mess. I'm going through one of those periods of time when the task of cleaning my house seems to be beyond me. I have an oasis of orderliness in the kitchen and that's about it. In the rest of the house, I keep doing cleaning and the cleaning gets undone faster than I can reclean. Like I totally cleaned my bathroom and then a day later I looked in and saw a hockey helmet, three dinosaurs, telephone messages and other assorted effluvia that had washed up on my formerly pristine vanity.

hm - that's almost leonard cohenesque - 'I scrubbed at every surface/I thought my soul was clean/the mirror was a lecher/my vanity was pristine'

you know what? bedtime.