Ecover Squirt

My life these days seems to be a never-ending series of Sisyphusian tasks. Cook a meal, clean the kitchen, cook meal, clean kitchen, cook, clean, sunset, sunrise, repeat.

No sooner do I finish sorting a drawer, cabinet or room does something need to be mended in - or removed from - said drawer/cabinet/room. Everything that was in there needs to be shifted to some other drawer, cabinet or room, and this means rearranging everything that used to exist in that space to some other space. Arrrrrggggggggggh!

I'm reminded of an ex-boyfriend's mother who had a mastectomy and directly after her surgery she and her husband remodeled their kitchen. I remember her obsessing over really small details and parts of the process. Kitchen cabinet knobs became the thing. Should they be football shaped or moon shaped? If moon-shaped, should they be crescent moon or new moon shaped? Her husband and son became increasingly frustrated with her, wanting her to make what they felt was a simple decision.

I, on the other hand, completely sympathized.

Obsessing, er... focusing, on something that you can control - no matter how small - alleviates the need to focus on the real thing, the serious thing, the thing that's too big for your tiny, crazed, brilliant mind to encompass.

My...focus... is always cleaning some minute part of a room that is, otherwise, completely covered in crap. At the moment, that describes my entire house. People who know me will know that this is not a comfortable state of affairs for me. So, tonight it was the bottom shelf of a bookshelf. I got down on the floor on my hands and knees, sprayed the shelf with cleaner and then scrubbed the thing within an inch of its life. Behind me, there is an ottoman covered in sheet protectors filled with embellishments for card making and scrapbook pages, a furry alpaca pillow that has yet to find a home in any of the chairs that we own, my knitting bag that is (quite literally) overflowing with yarn and knitting accoutrements and a plastic storage container that has various archival adhesives in it.

My bookshelf shelf is gleaming. I could eat my evening meal off of that thing. Do I care that can't see the floor in the rest of the room? You bet your sweet ass I do. I am, however, choosing to ignore it.

Ooh, wait, look, there's a speck of dust left on the back edge. Let me just get that...