That Awkward Age

The X-Rated Video Playing in the Corners of My Cob-Web Infested Mind

I’m lusting after another woman’s husband.

I’ve never met him.

Don’t know his name.

Never talked to him on the phone.

Never even seen a picture.

But I talked to his wife at a party last weekend, and I can’t get him out of my mind.

You see, he’s an obsessive-compulsive vacuumer.  He does it every day when he gets home from work. He can’t stop. He’s in treatment for it.

I want him.

My fantasizing reached its zenith Saturday night at 11:30 while I was still snaking the hose of my canister cleaner under and around the chair legs of the dining room chairs. I’m sucking up stale crumbs and dog hair with sweat pouring into my eyes.

It’s not that I’m devoid of OCD men in my life. One of my sons is certified OCD, and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

But all OCD’ers are not created equal. When you’ve seen one, you haven’t seen them all. You’ve got the Howie Mandel-type that hate germs. The quirkie, Monk-type with hundreds of phobias, including milk. The Howard Hughes-type that are reclusive. The counting or checking type. The ladies who take in hundreds of cats. The hoarders. They come in many flavors, just like Ben & Jerry’s.*

When my son could only crawl, he would linger over the fringe on a rug and straighten it.  All of his flatware had to be lined up perfectly before he could take a bite of food.

In school his classroom notes look like examples from the D'Nealian Handwriting textbook. Perfect loops, ascenders and descenders. (His teachers loved him for that one – other things, not so much.)

And then there’s the husband, from where the gene came, no doubt. His packing of the dishwasher is an engineering feat that rivals the construction of the Hoover Dam. Equally good, and obsessive, is his knack for packing a car trunk for a family of five at Christmas – with gifts for families on both sides and Santa Claus for the three kids.

Yes, I realize I’m a very lucky woman. I’m sure I get more clean dishes per gallon of water than anyone in Virginia.

But still.

Is it too much to ask for a man with a nice healthy vacuuming addiction? He doesn’t even have to be jonesing for a daily vacuum. Even a small weekly monkey on his back would work for me.  

And if wishes were horses, he could also be a little neurotic about keeping the bathroom clean, but I don’t want to push it.

There’s got to be a 12-Step Program full of vacuum-eligible guys out there somewhere just waiting to be discovered.

Or, maybe there’s one out there, in blogland, reading today. If so, I’ve got an Electrolux here, just waiting on you, Baby.

Easy glide, effortlessly transitions from carpets and rugs to bare-floor surfaces like tile, linoleum or hard wood.

All the attachments you can handle.

 Photo: By gadl

 *Before you write me nasty letters, I know that OCD is a real disease, and that many people suffer greatly with it. It is my hope that no feelings were injured in the writing of this blog.

 

 

 

 

When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, I’ll be Cleaning Out My Office

People say you see your life flash before your eyes when you are dying. I saw my sister-in-law peering into my second-floor office, shaking her head in disgust.
 
If you “friend” me on Facebook or in real life, you probably know that I had a weird, serious illness that landed me in the hospital last week. (I won’t go into details, because I might want to poach my experience for a few more blog posts.) There were several points that I actually thought I might die.

You may be familiar with that lovely thought, meant to get you to slow down and smell the roses: “Nobody wishes on their deathbed that they had spent more time at the office.”

It’s a boldfaced lie.

When I was dialing 911 from on the side of Rt. 58 in Southside Virginia after nearly passing out behind the wheel of my car, my first thought was not, “Am I ready to meet my Maker?” but, “I can’t die yet – I’ve got too big a mess to clean out!”

My sister-in-law is Martha Stewart on a budget. She is the best homemaker I know that isn’t on TV with a paid staff. That, plus she has a job, keeps the books for my brother’s business and helps to take care of both her mother and mine.

Back during my salad days when I was going to be liberated and famous for something, I didn’t place much value in a perfectly organized spice rack. But since nobody ever showed up at the door from either Random House Publishing or Publishers’ Clearinghouse and shoved money and adoration at me, I’ve since learned to appreciate the domestic skills that others cultivated from imitating their mothers, reading Good Housekeeping and watching the Food Channel. And I recognized long ago that I fall dreadfully short.

I tend to compare all the worst parts of myself to the very best traits in multiple people so that I can more successfully feel like a failure. I’m not as good a writer as Joan Didian, Annie Proulx or Annie Dillard, so I should just forget it. I can’t sing like Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez, so I’m a choir drop out. I’ll never look like Christy Brinkley, so why exercise?

And if I did nothing but clean and decorate, my house would never look as nice as my sister-in-law Debbie’s. Even after Christmas morning when the grandkids have opened presents and had a sugar meltdown. I’m telling you, she actually has shelves in her house that are empty. I’m in awe.

If there’s a gene for organizing stuff and visualizing how pillows and drapes will look together once you get them off the sale rack and into your house, I missed it. I used to slop a pretty mean paint brush, but I’ve given that up because it hurts my arthritis.

On my dad’s side of the family, there were relatives who were very tidy, and then there were those … one in particular … who was an infamous hoarder. She saved every can, string and meat paper, until finally she had to move out of the house and into the barn with the cow.

My pack rattedness isn’t quite that bad yet. I don’t have a barn or a cow. If I did, I’d move the cow out. Think of all the plastic storage containers you could stack in there.

A Star is Born . . . A Mom is Left to Clean His Room

My youngest son, Nathan, left our Virginia home two weeks ago with one suitcase, a guitar and $70 in his pocket to find his fame and fortune as a rock star. 

He is now officially clueless in Seattle. Hopefully, he won’t get hungry there, too.

He’s living with another aspiring musician, Jared, a kid who grew up down the street from us and who lived with my other two sons as their third roommate for a spell. Jared went into the Army and came out with a different roommate, a wife, who apparently is quite supportive of her husband’s – and my son’s – career dreams, since she’s the one paying the bills.

When Nathan told me about the arrangement, I was incredulous at first. But it began to grow on me after a while, especially since he showed no visible signs of life before 2 p.m. and then couldn’t understand why he couldn’t find a job. He had boomeranged back home in March after getting laid off from his construction job. 

“What a deal,” I told Nathan. “Why don’t you stay here and I’ll go to Seattle?”

From what my middle son tells me, who Skypes with Nathan daily, the wife is now in the California desert training for Iraq and has told Jared and Nathan they have to have jobs when she gets back in four weeks. Good for her. I would hate to think that the security of our country is in the hands of a woman without a backbone.

I hope she’s able to do what I could not – inspire my son to productivity. But then, I don’t carry a machine gun as a regular thing.

Over the weekend I started cleaning out his room. I had put if off since the first time he moved out nearly two years ago.

I’m not a gifted organizer, like my sister-in-law. She folds and stacks her towels like a K-Mart display, transfers her cereal into individual plastic containers and alphabetizes her spices. I think she probably looks at a big mess and sees a challenge. I look at one and shut the door.

But I was determined to clean it up this time, so called in the reinforcements. I staged a family dinner, inviting my two in-town sons to a home cooked meal. I boxed up all the books and toys left in my son’s room from his kidhood for my granddaughter Cheyenne (much of which she didn’t want), piled up Nathan’s abandoned shoes for the two boys to try on (they didn’t fit) and bagged Nathan’s stacks of guitar magazines for Jordan.

I was having them lug the ratty mattress and box springs to the road when Jordan decided that they looked better than the ratty mattress and no box springs that he sleeps on – on the floor – so he claimed them. But since he’s moving from his current apartment in a few months, there’s no point in moving it twice, so could he keep them in our garage?

And oh, how about Nathan’s old bedspread and curtains? Could he just put those in HIS room until he can get them? The room that is NEXT on my list for a major clean out? And while he’s at it, why doesn’t he just leave the stacks of guitar magazines there, too, because he really doesn’t have space in his current apartment. He’ll get it all when he moves. Promise, Mom.

So Abram and Jordan dragged the mattress into the garage and put it between the pile of boxes that Bob brought home the last day of his teaching job at the local community college 15 years ago and the bedroom suite for Cheyenne that Abram asked to store for six weeks two years ago. Right outside the garage sits the ’94 Escort that Nathan sold to Jordan for $350, allowing him to remain unemployed for a little while longer, but which does not run at the moment. Jordan says he’s bought the stuff to work on it, when he gets the time.

When they left Sunday evening, I realized the room cleaning project had ended up a lot like my aging body. All the stuff is still there, it’s just moved to different places.