Cleaning

Friday was exhaustion and relief. Saturday was leisure. Sunday was rest.

Monday? Is cleaning.

I seem to be doing my own take on the flylady.net fifteen-minute zone cleaning thing. It's amazing how much stuff can get done in fifteen minutes if that's the only thing you're doing in those fifteen minutes. It's also appalling to see how much is left to do after the fifteen minutes have passed.

I think I'll get the place reasonable in another 45 minutes, though it may take me a bit to work up to starting in on stuff again. I need either more storage space or less stuff. I know I need shelves in the storage closet outside, because there are all sorts of things that could be properly boxed and put out there, and there are all my books that want to come inside.

Unless we were free.

It's a moment forever trapped in the amber of memory.

I have loved my best friend with all the passion in my twenty-year-old heart for what feels like forever, and has only been about a month so far. Merely meeting him was enough to teach me that everything I'd learned about love before this had been incomplete: flawed and twisted. I had been engaged before we met, and married in all but the eyes of the law. I broke faith with my betrothed and handfasted husband on the sudden knowledge that marriage should at the least include mutual respect and trust. My new best friend and I have known each other not much longer than I've loved him, and it feels as if we've known each other forever. We don't have to use words half the time; we have conversations in a glance, a gesture. When I am upset, he can feel it from miles away, and will call just to make sure I'm all right. I love him with all my heart ... and he loves my sister.

She isn't my sister by birth, but she might as well be. We had clutched each other close in the absence of close or reliable family, and I know that I would rather die than hurt her in any way. We'd both fallen for this same young man and done the "You first," "No, I insist, after you," dance, and in the end I had prevailed and she was dating him. He had chosen her when I stepped back out of the running, and he loves her enough to warm her desperately lonely heart. They have been sickeningly sweet with each other, and have been exquisitely careful to not shut me out too much. I have been pretending that their happiness has been enough to make me happy.

She has gone into the computer lab for some errand or other, and he and I are waiting for her on the benches outside. The waiting stretches and melts into a syrupy timelessness, and our eyes catch together. This, too, becomes the moment, and I am falling into him as we sit a careful distance apart, not touching. I know -- we both know -- that if either of us moves, we will be kissing, and from there it will be no turning back.

We breathe at each other, suspended on the edge of where love becomes betrayal. I'd betrayed the vows I'd made before the eyes of the gods, and I'd betrayed them for the hope of him. How easy would a second betrayal be, in the absence of any vows to be broken between my beloved and my sister?

I am the first to speak.

"It would break her heart," I say.
He says nothing.

We look away from each other, then, and wait for her to return.

Rabbit Hole

The 27th is Rabbit Hole Day again this year, right?

(no subject)

Am hoping library is open today. ... Alas, if only the library had been open. See's is gone from the mall! That really bites.

(no subject)

Headed to fry's electronics. People on the bus have friends with serious problems. It feels very good to be up & about.

(no subject)

Walking is fun. I have had trouble running since I was about 10 and hurt my lungs racing around on the museum grounds.

(no subject)

I am appalled that we don't have a real website yet. I have got to fix that. Any host recommendations?

(no subject)

I seem to be coming down from the nasty stuff as Naomi. Part of that was the location. Part was Dagger making it safe.

(no subject)

I think I spoke too soon when I said I thought I would not get medication hangover. Dizzy with bonus headache.

Bad Parenting Moments in history...

I shared this one with the aunts, and they found it disturbing and then funny.


Once upon a time, when a little boy wasn't doing as he should, the Parent-in-Charge (more or less) finally threatened the boy that either he should do as told, or the Parent-in-Charge would cut off the head of the boy's teddy bear.

The boy screamed back that he didn't care, and he still wouldn't do as told.

The Parent-in-Charge perhaps wisely didn't follow through on the threat.


... This was perhaps one of said Parent-in-Charge's last actions as parent of the child, as the child's biological parent summarily ended the relationship and revoked all quasi-parental rights (which had been given him by custom, not by law) and left post-haste with child in tow, within the next week.