{spring cleaning in August}

we have been cleaning for two days. starting with the ceiling fans, whose blades were dirty when we moved in a year ago (almost exactly a year ago now) and haven't been touched since. gross. Roger's version of cleaning is more like straightening up than actual washing down.

replaced lightbulbs that burned out a year ago (only broke one globe in the process), bagged up eight trash bags' worth of clothes to be sold/donated, and managed to get all of the several several dozen CDs back into their rightful cases.

and we are so far from done. but it's starting to feel like my apartment again, like our apartment again, not just someplace I come back to every month or so to empty and re-pack my suitcase.

good things: my shoes lined up on one side of the room, his on the other, tops open like invitation, toes to the wall. orderly dressers, all the drawers shut, slam trophies and various pieces of silver jewelry strewn in piles. on the mantel of the non-working fireplace: two white candles. two silver chalices tarnishing. a blue ceramic teapot (a gift from my sister), an African mask, a black stone, a small length of red rope knotted, my grandmother's handkerchief. incense. the dreamcatcher he bought me on our first trip upstate to go apple-picking.

he wants to move the bed. I'm not sure. I guess this is what they call "settling down."

tomorrow: the stacks of paper peopling every corner of every room. then, the bathroom (shudder.)

exercise:

in your dreams, what color are the walls?
use the words crescendo, vacuous, secrete, band, burning, and range.