InsaneJournal

Current mood:	amused
Current music:	radio
Entry tags:	life

Adventures in Housecleaning
After the bitter disappointment of last night's elections, and after book-shopping-on-ebay therapy failed, I had to vent some rage today, and... Wow, I actually did something useful! (All cheer!) I cleaned my room (which didn't take long, because I never let it get too bad) and all the ground floor windows (the upstairs boys can mind their own grime), which took me several hours. That should be an indication of how dirty the fuckers were. I strongly suspect they haven't been cleaned since they were put in. (As they already have double glass, I estimate that this nebulous date was some point in the 1980s.) I got the inspiration when looking out and wondering whether that vehicle parked on the opposite side of the road really was the mail man or just some random yellow car. All I could make out were the colour and a vague car shape.

My roommates were of course filled with delight and glee, because (for everything but dishes, which happen in rotation) we have the convenient rule for dirt you didn't make yourself (if you make dirt, you clean it), like most of the, er, sedimentation that happens over time, is that it's left around until someone caves and cleans it. (That someone usually isn't me, because I'm not easily bothered by a little dust. It's what shoes are for.) Of course, if you do that, you lose. (I don't know what you lose, but you definitely lose something. Piggy points, probably. Or squalor cred.)*

But well, as I said, I needed something to vent. So I set out with heavy cleaning equipment, sleeves and jeans legs rolled up, and my CD player blasting classic heavy metal.
Roommate A: "It's a war, isn't it?"
SV: "Indeed, my friend, it is! If I don't return, tell me family I died bravely." *grimly eyes window* "Lie, if you must."

2 hours later: SV's rage is mostly vented. There are still half the windows to clean. The CD player is now playing woeful Joan Baez ballads.
Roommate A: "Let me guess, you lost?"
SV: "I prefer saying that we have entered peace negotiations... But I would have won if it hadn't been for these damn hippies!"

In the end, I cleaned all of them. Even the kitchen one that doesn't open (because someone has cleverly built the work surface in front) and has to be ascended to on a wobbly ladder from the garden, and the one that has half a hedge bursting in if you open it. I think I killed about a bazillion spiders, and made a far more obscure discovery: two of the windows were a lot cleaner than the others. Roommate A admitted to having cleaned them at some point. Which made me wonder... why not the others while you're at it? Until I realised, the clean ones were those that are easy to open and easy to reach. So, maybe his logic was that cleaning the same windows several times made up for never cleaning the others? It being the same amount of work and all?

* General Observation: Humans can make a contest of just about anything. Even about who wins at bad things. Or at not doing something. Probably because only winning stupid contests is still better than never winning anything at all. We are practical that way.