Monthly Archives: May 2010

Helpful Housecleaning Hints

If you are one of those people who like to clean, then this is not the entry for you.  You can just grab your Swiffer and go dust something.  This entry is for those of us who LOATHE cleaning with every fiber of our being.  Personally, I would rather have my eyeballs eaten by maggots as I’m awake than clean the house.  Be that as it may, there are times when cleaning is unavoidable.  Say, for example, when one’s mother is coming for a looooooong stay.  Then, one must suck it up and clean.  Fortunately, I did a semi-thorough cleaning before I visited Kel last month, so the house wasn’t as horrendous as it could have been.  Unfortunately, due to my complex feelings for my mother at this moment, I kept putting off the actual cleaning.  It was as if I could forestall her visit by not cleaning.  Childish, I know, but I never claimed to be mature.  So, I put it off and put it off and put it off until I absolutely could not procrastinate any longer.  I have a very unique way of cleaning, and I thought I would share some tips with you in case you’re ever caught in the same situation.  You’re welcome.

First of all, this weekend has been hot here.  Eighties/nineties, and for me, that’s hot.  I usually keep the AC at eighty degrees, but I turn it down to seventy-eight when I clean.  Still, even with that adjustment, I get damn hot.  As I am a tad OCD, once I start cleaning, I put my back into it.  And, I don’t stop.  I get heated during any kind of activity, so I sweat like a pig when I clean.  To that end, I prefer to clean in the nude.  Now, however, I wear a pedometer, and I feel damn guilty if I am not counting my steps.  I tried to clip the pedometer to my nipple and to my glasses, but neither worked.  So, I kept on the boxers (South Park, yo!) and ditched the top.  Then, I pulled my hair into a high bun because I hate that sticky feeling on the back of the neck from perspiring under my long mane of hair.

Then, to get myself in the mood to clean, I put on some music.  It has to be blood-pumping music.  This is one of the best songs to get me revved up to clean.  It’s called Here Comes My Baby, this version is done by The Mavericks, and it was written and originally performed by Cat Stevens (h/t Steeplejack from BJ).  I love the whole feel of the song, plus the outrageous go-go dancers.   After I listened to this song a time or ten, I was ready to clean.  Now, because of my aforementioned affinity for cleaning in as minimal clothing as possible, I usually wait until the sun goes down before I clean.  I live on a golf course, and I don’t want to distract them from stroking their balls, if you get my drift.  Besides, it’s cooler at night.  Therefore, it’s a better time to clean. Here are my helpful hints to make housecleaning as painless as possible.

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Shame On You

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been blogging lately.   There are many reasons for that, but the main one is because I have been retreating into myself the closer my mom’s visit approaches (Monday.  Six in the morning.  Brother is picking her up).   It’s not that I think she will read my blog because she won’t.  It’s just that I am so used to hiding myself from her, I can feel myself instinctively retreating.  And shutting down.  I feel the real me gingerly retreating from the edges of my body and curling up into a ball.   In my mind, I can see myself curled up into a ball trying very very hard not to move.

I actually wrote an entry a few weeks ago but didn’t publish it because I feel too raw right now.  However, I don’t want to give up blogging completely because it’s good for me, and I like doing it, damn it.  So, I am giving it another shot while I’m waiting for my mechanic to call me with an estimate.  Then, I need to sleep, but I’m drinking twenty-four ounces of coffee, so who knows if that will happen?  It’s mostly water, though.  Don’t worry.  No triple-espresso for me.

OK.  Back to the topic on hand.  Shame.

The last few months of therapy have been incredibly painful, but in a much-needed way.  We are working on some deep-seated issues, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.  Here’s the thing.  I have no illusions about my father.  He has no capacity to think of anything from someone else’s point of view, and he isn’t truly capable of seeing the real me, let alone genuinely loving me.  I knew that a long time ago, with or without the molestation (funny aside.  I wince using the word abuse when describing what my father did to me.  I don’t know why, but I prefer molestation).  I don’t expect anything from my father because he’s not able to give anything.

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Or Am I Just Dreaming?

I dream.  I dream a lot.  I dream too much.  You say there is no such thing?  Au contraire, mon frere.  There is.  I do it.  I do not like it.  I would rather not dream at all.

Choolie’s husband, whom I will call Kojak, is a lucid dreamer.  He has been for many years.  Choolie brought it up to me and suggested that I read a book about it and talk to Kojak about it.   I had trepidations about it for many reasons–some I could name, and some more nebulous.

The easy reason for my fear:  I have OCD.  Duh, I can hear you think.  You’re not telling us anything new, Hong!  Hear me out.  Because I’m OCD, I throw myself into any passion with a fervor approaching zeal.   When I used to scry, I did it for hours at a time.  When I was in the thick of my ED issues, all I could think about was food, dieting, exercising, and how many inches/pounds I was losing.  If I were to try to lucid dream, I was afraid I would never stop.

Another easy reason:  I have been enamored of otherwords for some time.  One time during bodywork, voices called for me to join them.  I started walking towards them, and I was crushed when my bodyworker called me back to earth.   That was many years ago.  I have resigned myself to living on this earth for now, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.  I am afraid that if I start lucid dreaming, I’ll never want to be awake again.   Kojak told me that you can do anything you want in lucid dreaming.  You can manipulate anything and everything.  It’s only a dream, right?  I told him he must not have been raised Christian because I instinctively flinched at the idea of manipulating everything, even in my dreams, even though I haven’t been Christian for a very long time.

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Cheap Grace*

Forgiveness is the topic of today’s entry.   I wrote an earlier entry on the topic, but I want to expand on it because of something that happened at Kiki’s birthday bash last Saturday.

Three women and I were standing outside smoking (standard disclaimer, I smoke when I’m with Kiki, which is maybe once a month, blah blah blah).   Anyway, Kiki was not with us at that time.  We were having a nice chat about families and whatnot (two of the three women were mothers.  I’m not sure about the other woman).  We were talking about how friendships didn’t have to be lifetime things in order to be of value.  Then, one of the women, let’s call her R, made a connection to family.  She said while she loved her mother, she didn’t necessarily like her.  One of the other women, we’ll call her T, talked about how she told her father why he was a shithead, and ironically, they had a better relationship after that.

From there, the other women started riffing on forgiveness.  R recounted a tale from her teen years in which her father made her cry.  It took her years to forgive him, but she added, “I did because I have things that I need to be forgiven for!”  The other women nodded in agreement as if to say, “Who doesn’t?”

At this point, I wasn’t saying anything, but something inside me rebelled.  This is one of the reasons I got out of Christianity (to the extent that I was ever in it)–false equivalence.  Lusting in one’s heart was the same as committing adultery.  Thinking about killing someone was the same as actually doing it.  If that was the case, I wondered, then why not actually do whatever it was in your heart?  I mean, if I was going to get condemned to hell for lusting, I might as well have the pleasure of copulation, amirite?

So, while I have many things for which I need to be forgiven, anything I’ve done to my father pales in comparison to what he did to me.  I refuse to have any false equivalence about it.

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