The Joy of Cleaning

My house is filthy--no really; it's filthy!

That's because we've been under construction for two days--inside and out--having the house waterproofed. Now that the workers have packed up and left, along with a significant amount of our savings, there is dust and grit ev-er-y-wheeeeere. I'm cleaning rooms from top to bottom, extracting remnants of our basement from nooks and crannies that haven't seen a dust rag in awhile, and I've only polished off a couple of rooms all told.

It's Sunday, and I figure I'll be back at it again for the whole day.

So how come I enjoyed myself so much yesterday? How come I'm looking forward to grabbing that bucket of water and my Dyson and digging in again today? Part of it is that cleaning up this mess means my house is getting that thorough, the Pope-is-coming-to-visit cleaning that should get done at least twice a year but only seems to get done once a decade. Part of it is I'm not willing to chew food sprinkled with pulverized stone, nor do I like the feeling of living 24-7 on a beach. But while on my hands and knees wringing out the black (yes black) water from my sponge as I wiped down the hallway that had seen hundreds of buckets of busted concrete and fresh cement travel through, it occur ed to me that I was happy because of what I couldn't do instead.

I couldn't write.

In a world where we are always prioritizing, writing should be right up there for me. I've told everyone--family, friends, neighbors, business associates, the attendant at the Y, small town law enforcement officers--that I am writing a book and I want to finish it in a year. I've started my own accountability blog so others can hold my feet to the fire. I've done everything but set my computer up on the sidewalk to draw attention to my quest in hopes that such attention will spur me on to completion and shame me when I falter.

Unfortunately, none of that accountability hoo-haa has worked like I thought it would. I'm dealing with time issues and I've got a healthy dose of writer's block, true, but I'm also a somewhat self-indulgent person who doesn't want to give up a paycheck, gardening, reading, cooking, dates with Katz, dinner out with the girls, and a prime time TV addiction, so writing often gets short shrift.

What the accountability hoo-haa has done is given me a load of guilt to carry around. It has taken all those things I love to do from being a natural, normal part of my day and turned them into conscious choices I must make. When I choose to do something I love to do, I am often left with that you-are-not-a-very-good-person taste in my mouth because I don't choose to write. But, cleaning my house--well, it's not a choice right now, it's a must do or Katz will move out and the health department will slap a Dirty Dining sticker on my front door.

I just can't write today. I just can't.

What a relief.