Not doing it...

Here I am not doing the dishes that are soaking in boiling hot water in the kitchen sink. The water will cool off and I will have to add new hot water, so I can burn my hands properly when I reach in to get the knifes and forks. That will cause me to say bad words, but there are no easily impressed children here, so it doesn't matter. The animals don't know about such things, they are innocent. They only know how to make several sounds and swearing isn't one of them.

Not that I really swear, of course. I have been raised right, but I learned to say four letter words in English and, because they had less meaning to me, I say them easily, like most Dutch people of a certain generation do. You wouldn't believe their language in English! They say words they wouldn't say in Dutch. Well, I do too, sometimes. It feels good, especially when you're not able to say those things in your own language, because you would be too embarrassed to.

All English speaking people should learn to swear in another language that they all agree upon. I can imagine a few popular comedians starting this trend and the whole English speaking world picking this up. Everybody would have to learn about five foreign swear words, maybe ten to make it really challenging, but let's start with five. Popular comedians from the biggest English speaking nations could then import these words into their repertoire and make them common and every day. National papers could report about the phenomenon and print these words in articles they write about it and people would learn how the words looked and get some sense of the pronunciation and the feel of them. They could be in Swedish or German or French, or to be really offensive, in Japanese. No, scratch that, we can't do that to the Japanese after they gave us things like the Toyota and rock gardens.

See what happens when you write a post instead of doing the dishes on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon? I could have done those dishes yesterday. There aren't that many of them and if I had a dishwasher, I wouldn't have to bother with sticking my hands in hot boiling water at all.

Well, luckily there is some insulating power in household gloves, so I'll be wearing those. Pretty pink ones too, so a man wouldn't be caught dead wearing them and they probably wouldn't fit either.

It's been so nice to have the day off, although I have yet to do much useful with it. I've walked Jesker twice and he was relieved twice in all meanings of the word. I go around the apartment and do nonsensical things, like rearrange books and empty ashtrays and flatten milk cartons and act like I've really done a lot. It all makes no difference. I am lazy and that's the way it is. No, I am not lazy, I am just at the end of my housewifely career. I really need a housekeeper at this point, as I'm so totally not capable of finding satisfaction in cleaning up my apartment and I really don't care enough. If you roller skate through it and it looks clean, then I'm happy. Just roller skate at a steady speed, please.

Well, all silliness aside, I am going to vacuum in a while after I have done the dishes, because I must do something to warrant my existence here. I can't just sit and be. I also have to do. It's been a while now since I've discovered that vacuuming is not the dangerous household task that I thought it was, so I can easily do it for the fifteen minutes that it's going to take me to clean the place up. No mass murderer is going to sneak into the apartment and wipe me out because I can't hear him enter. God, the horrible fantasies I have. An imaginative mind is a terrible curse. It lets you pretend too much.

I realize that leaves me one chore short of three, but I'm sure I'll think of something else that's very productive and useful. There is always something else to do. My loyal four footers make sure of that. It's because of their dirty paws that I clean the kitchen cabinet doors, which are an impractical white and whoever thought of that being a good color for a kitchen? It must have been a man who never cleaned house.

I take back everything I ever said about carpet and wish I had it throughout the whole apartment. I have carpet in my bedroom and that room stays so clean. I only dust and vacuum it once a week or so. The rest of the apartment has linoleum, because I thought that was more practical, but I regret it now. All those rooms have nothing but hair and dust, constantly, and when I can afford it, I am going to have carpet put into the other rooms as well. Big words, When I Can Afford It. I will, some day. I just don't want to think about the big job it is going to be to put it in. Argh!

Well, really, you guys. I have to go and do those dishes now and drag that vacuum cleaner through the apartment. I always make my best moves at the end of the day. Not when I'm at my best like ordinary people, but when I'm mentally already slipping into a lower gear. Playing with hot water will perk me back up, though. It's a dangerous business, playing house. Electric appliances and hot water and everything.

Have a beautiful evening, or a beautiful day, if you are in that time zone.

Ciao...