In which I fail miserably yet again

For a week that was supposed to be free of booze, last week was awfully boozy. I have come to realize that giving up booze for a week means locking myself in a closet. I'm afraid I will have to modify this part of the project a bit to: no booze when I'm home alone. Last week I drank the last of my wine on Sunday, drank the last two beers from the river trip on Monday, had dinner with Bob on Wednesday (wine) and Girls Night on Thursday (more wine). So I managed only two nights of the week with no booze. This will not do.

On the other hand, I had a great time both Wednesday and Thursday nights, particularly Thursday with a group of girlfriends, just shooting the shit at my friend Amber's house. So I'm going to hereby modify my second week and try it again: no drinking alone. Lets see how that flies.

This week's challenge is Housekeeping.

I'm not much of a housekeeper. I'm not terrible, I mean I'm in no danger of DHS coming in and removing my child or anything. But I have found that, since my divorce, housekeeping has tumbled quite a few points on my list of things to give a shit about. For one thing, the mess is my own, so it doesn't piss me off the way the mess did when I was married and it wasn't just mine. I was the only one cleaning it up. But it wasn't just mine. So now I look around at the mess and think "hm. I should probably clean this up," not "I am so tired of cleaning up after that slob." In fact, it's probably been me who was the slob all along, but now it doesn't matter so much.

Another thing: the house is small and it doesn't really take that long to clean it, so I always think I'll do it later. And one more thing: I don't like to be always picking up, wiping up, putting away: so even when I see a mess and have a natural urge to clean it up, I will sometimes suppress that urge in favor of sitting on my ass or doing something else I enjoy, like reading a book or futzing in the garden or going to the book store to buy more books to add to the clutter.

So, really the main thing I'm working against this week is inertia and complacence. Okay, and the big mess that needs to be cleaned up today. Today I'm the white tornado, and my task all week is to keep things spotless. Theoretically, it shouldn't be difficult to keep things clean. All you have to do is clean up after yourself, right? So this week I don't fight the urge to pick things up, and I make a routine for myself of making sure everything is battened down before I go to bed.

Part of my problem is books. Okay, books and magazines. From where I'm sitting this morning I can see 13 books, stacked up or lying on the tables. There is also a goodly stack of unread magazines, plus two full baskets of magazines that have been read, waiting for their next incarnation. I take old magazines to the museum, leave them in a box on the loading dock and send out an email blast to everyone to come get them if they want them. Usually when I come back a day later, they're all gone. That's my recycling program.

The books are a little more problematic. I have four bookcases in my home: two tall ones and two short ones. One short one is dedicated to cookbooks and oversized books. The other three are just jammed full. And I persist in bringing in more. Hence the stacks on the tables. Today, as part of my Project, I'm going to go to Target and purchase another cheap tall bookcase to put in the Odd Room alongside its sister. That should free up some space. Maybe even make room for some of the two or three boxes of books still in the garage.

Every so often I'm obliged to go through and purge books, but I don't like it. My friend Ben advocates the Kindle reader. Swears that it really is just as satisfying as reading a real book. But I just can't do it. I need that physical object in my hand. I like seeing them on my shelves. I like the feel of them, the satisfaction of turning the pages, and most of all the smell. The wonderful, promising smell of books. New books especially, but old books have a smell all their own. I'm not prepared to give that up yet. So, I stack them on the coffee table, jam them into the bookcase on top of other books, and pile them up next to my bed. (There are five there at present)

Right now I'm in Trashy Summer Reading mode. I picked up some used pulp fiction and I'm wallowing in the guilty pleasure of it. Currently involved in The Talisman by Steven King and Peter Straub. But I also plowed through several young adult novels and a cheesey monster-fantasy thing called Nightlife this week. It's good escapist fiction. I promised myself I'd read something more redeeming next week: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress for my book club on the 29th. There are so many good books out there. I just can't resist adding them to my collection. Even when I don't have time to read them, or already have a dozen waiting to be read, there's always room for one more.

Anyway, as soon as I'm done here (no really, I promise), I'm going to go stack books and dust tables and scrub floors and vacuum up dog hair and wash rugs and dislodge the little black spider that makes her web in the corner of my bathroom between the edge of the shower curtain and the floor. I feel a little bad about this last, but I'm not planning on harming her, just sweeping away her web for a day and with it the dessicated carcasses of her latest victims. It must be click beetle season.

I have a number of house spiders, and I have a sort of policy of non-interference with them, for the most part. From where I sit I can see a perfect little orb web between the lamp and a large decorative basket on the end table. Can't see its denizen from here. Probably he or she only comes out to hunt at night. Sometimes I leave the lamp on to make for better hunting. I figure the spiders are doing me a service. And as long as we can abide by one another's rules, we can live in peace. My rule is that they don't walk on me or turn up in nasty unexpected places like my bed or my wadded up T-shirt on the floor. They do that and they're fair game. But if they stay in their place and just eat mosquitoes and flies, I'm cool with them.

But I'm going to have to break the treaty in the name of Housekeeping this week. All the webs must come down. I'm dismantling the settlements, rousting the squatters. I'm sure they'll be back, but for the sake of cleanliness, I'm going to evict them today.

Best hop to it.