Eccentric Flower:199810/housecleaning and topsy
From Eccentric Flower
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twenty-three october ninety eight noon housecleaning (and topsy) I began this morning by cleaning the bathtub in the nude. (Isn't that a wonderful opening sentence? Grabs the reader by the eyeballs.) Yes, it strikes even me as strange, but I have gradually come to think it efficient. Our tub is hard to clean, because it has sliding glass doors on a track instead of a curtain (not my choice) and the faucet end is half-blocked by the position of the sink (again, not my choice). So I generally end up in the tub just so I can reach all the grime. I tend to take baths with scented oils and other greasy things, so the grunge is very oily and I've found that it's actually better to try to scrub it off without using any water. So I create all these little crumbs of loose oily dirt, and quite a bit of it gets on me. The easiest way to get rid of what crumbs I can't scoop out is to run the shower - and I need a shower after cleaning it too - and I generally take a shower first thing in the morning anyway - and ... well, you see how it all makes sense now. It does make sense, doesn't it? Last night we had to give the house a tidying in order to prepare for weekend guests, but some strange and alien fit of cleaning energy seized me - I think I finally just went over the edge at never having enough places to put things - and I went on a big cleaning binge, from about eight pm till about one o'clock in the morning. I didn't finish, and I'm making a slow start today (aside from the tub), but I know I should finish it or it will never get finished. Besides, the spare bedroom isn't done yet, and that has to be done by five. Lest you wonder about my being home cleaning house on a work day: I beat my nasty code problem late yesterday afternoon, and I already know that I'll need to go in on Sunday for about six hours to finish up. Under the circumstances, I'm not losing much. The house rarely gets cleaned, but the code just goes on and on. I created seven bags of garbage last night. Most of it was things which I hadn't touched since moving in five years ago. Some of it was truly hideous stuff which I hadn't touched for several years before that, but hauled up here in a Ryder truck because of vague sentimental value. Well, I believe in sentimental value, but the forces of practicality gained back some territory last night. Terence Stamp: I did all this years ago. One of the things the cleaning has produced is various coffee mugs (no, no, clean ones - we may accumulate papers and books, but we don't leave dirty dishes lying about) with allegedly humorous words and pictures printed on them. People love to give these to me as gifts for some reason - probably because I have a justified reputation as being hard to shop for, and because everyone knows about me and coffee. Memo to any interested parties: Lay off the coffee mugs! I admit it's impossible to buy me books, CDs or software, my three main entertainment needs, because if I want it I've probably already bought it. But I'm not hard to buy for. A gift certificate at Victoria's Secret will be completely adequate, thanks. Anyway, I have a entire packing box in the basement full of such mugs, the ones from Louisiana, which I never unpacked because we accumulate them so quickly there was never any need to. In fact, since I have a few spaces empty in the box, I'm thinking of retiring a few from our overloaded cupboard. Where was I going with this? It had something vaguely to do with the Priscilla quote. Oh, yes. I noticed one today as I put it in the sink - it was a Dilbert mug, and it said "Your happiness and your job performance are influenced more by coffee than any other factor." And it occurred to me that someone had done this schtick before - the whole work-is-hell-my-boss-is-deranged bit - and done it much better, with the gloves off. Oh, come on, I just gave you a big hint. Everyone who said "Matt Groening" gets a gold star. That's right. Life In Hell, the edgy little strip he did before Bart and Lisa ever existed, and is, as far as I know, still doing, covered all this territory years ago. Go find the collection Work Is Hell and see for yourself. I've gradually come to dislike Dilbert. There are a lot of other reasons why as well, but that's a story for another day. The revolution This part may fall in the Too Much Information area for some. You can always skip ahead to Topsy. In addition to the Nude Scouring Experience, I had a nasty attack of transgenderitis while putting clothes in the closet. I have a lot of "play clothes" - clothes meant for females, clothes I probably couldn't wear out of the house even if I were female - and all of a sudden I absolutely had to stop and wear some of it, run my hands over it. Sigh. So one thing led to another, and I ended up in white tights, a short black puffy multi-layer petticoat (like square dancers wear - in fact, my mother is a square dancer and I recognized the label when I bought it and thought wryly that it would have cost half as much if I'd bought it from a dancer's supplier instead of a fetish clothing store - sigh again), and my black Miracle Bra with the silicone forms beneath. This looked quite ridiculous, I need not add, more so because my hair was still a mess from the shower and I haven't shaved in a while. But this was a tactile sensation thing, not a visual thing. I thought, in my reverie, that perhaps a little lipstick would be fun - went out into the hall to rummage in the makeup box - and ducked back into the bedroom in a big hurry. My sprightly landlady was out on the front porch, tidying it up for no good reason. (She has random fits of cleaning energy just about every day.) Our hall has uncurtained windows! She didn't see me, thank heavens, but you see what happens when you get distracted from your housecleaning? No good can come of it, I tell you. Miss Ophelia: Have you heard anything about God, Topsy? Do you know who made you? And now, a complete change of subject. You'll notice that when I quoted the explanation of Topsy in the previous entry, I hedged a little about its accuracy. I did that because somewhere at the back of my head lurked the nagging idea that Topsy was a young female human of some sort, and that Machrone was barking up the wrong tree. My suspicions were correct. Three people wrote me to say that Topsy is actually a character in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Two of those three people noted that Carol Mosely-Braun took offense to Trent Lott's using the phrase on the Senate floor, claiming it was racist ... and one of the three even gave me the quote - which is good because I don't own the book. This is one of the many reasons I love you folks.
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