Of Soggy Pears and Messy Houses

My Soggy Pear and Vitamin Collection

This is an essentialist statement, but I think women (as a collective) have been and will forever be married to nesting and space. As much as I like to rip apart the stereotypes, my life tends to always prove the essentialist argument right. No matter what feminist approach I take to justifying my need to decorate, clean, and simply NEST, men in my life uphold a consistent habit of messiness and lack of decorative know-how. It gets to be gross sometimes. Two weeks ago, I babysat my friend Antonio's two dogs while he was in Cancuun.

Big mistake. The 20 year old pissed ALL OVER my freaking house. And while the young Rot (cute as pie) was well behaved, he shed little black and brown hairs all over the place. This did not help the fact that I am always cleaning my own doggie's hair out of weird places. Kevin, who was really distraught by the scenario, resorted to complaining. In the end, the cleaning work was up to one person, and one person alone: ME.

The funny thing about this situation is that the house, which already needed cleaned, now needed a DEEP DEEP cleaning. And my short attention span with life is really evident in my cleaning habits. During my winter break, I made a cleaning list of things that really, really needed extra time and effort. The list included "vacuum the steps". Um, isn't that something that should be done anyway? The result of my messiness coupled with my newfound inclination to eat healthy is SOGGY PEARS. I learned that pears are beautiful, and look lovely when they are on display in your kitchen. They also wrinkle. I have also learned (but kinda already knew) that I am a major pack-rat. But aren't we all? I finally threw away greeting cards from last Christmas, especially if they were only written to Kevin and not me. Bitter bitch, I am I am. See, I get pissy when someone sends me an xmas card because I am a freakin' Jew. And I get pissy when the xmas cards are not inclusive of both me and Kevin. Saucy lady, I am I am.

My solution was to hire someone to clean my house. And I found a goddess. It took her five hours to do the kitchen and living room, both of which are pretty small. And then the bathtub. She had to leave to pick up her kids from school. But she cleaned things I didn't realize needed cleaning (sorry for the gross out):

• INSIDE the coffee pot.
  
• On TOP of the fridge.
• Toothbrush the kitchen floor.
• The bottom of the plant pots.
• The leaves of the plants.

Have you ever seen a male house keeper? Because I haven't. I wanna know where they are, and why there aren't more of them. And then I want to squeeze and hug the housekeeping population.

Since my house is clean, though, I have been able to make MAJOR head way on my knitting: