2003-02-24 - 6:37 p.m.
Hello, my name is Ken, and I can't stop cleaning stuff.
It's an obsession. It's a compulsion. It's an obsessive-comuplsive drive to make sure that my room is absolutely, 100% spotless.
There can be no clutter on my desks. There can be no dirty clothes anywhere except in the closet I designate for clothes awaiting laundering. Clean clothes must be folded and/or hung up properly. All doors in the room must be able to open and shut completely without exertining any effort.
I need empty space. All furniture in the room (and there can't be too much of it) must be touching a wall with it's longest side. Nothing acting as an island in the center of the room, and nothing jutting too far toward that center. I need enough open floor space to be able to do gymnastics if I so choose.
Some of this drive is grounded in justifiable need. I have really bad allergies to dust, mold, pollen, and pet dander, in other words, everything that accumulates in your carpet when you don't vacuum. So I don't feel weird about vacuuming once a day. It's good for me. As for the rest of it, I try. I try so much to just let it go, to let the clutter accumulate and just be in a messy room for a few days. But my resolve inevitably fails, and the next thing you know, everything is perfectly straightened and put away again.
The sad part is, when I consider my room to be at the messiest I can possibly let it get, it takes all of about 10 minutes to get it clean again.
"Ok Ken," you joke, "come on over to my place. I've got stuff you can clean."
Never heard that one before. But it's not just a general drive to clean shit, although I have been known to randomly straighten rooms up, it's an obsessed drive for my own personal area to be clean and in order. And it's not even all of my area. I never, ever make my bed, except after I've changed the sheets (which I do once a week) and that's the only time you will EVER see my bed made up. I can't tolerate an empty water bottle on my desk, but I'll deal with a bed that looks like someone's been thrashing around all night (which is how my sleep goes).
Personally, I'm a big fat slob. You've all (most of you anyway) seen how I dress. I look NOTHING like the kind of person who needs to keep an immaculate room. I wear clothing with holes and all kinds of stains (though, oddly enough, I refuse to wear dirty clothes and generally don't smell bad.)
You may laugh now. "Oh, there goes Ken, being all anal about keeping his stuff tidy. What a freak."
But there will come a time. A time when you've had enough of the clutter, the dirty dishes, the sticky table, and the crusty pillowcases (okay, maybe not the pillowcases) and you too will begin to clean solely for the sake of cleaning.
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I had my dream again while napping this afternoon (following cleaning up, something I was able to hold off on doing for all of three hours after christine left. I'm proud.)
It's the dream that's haunted my childhood- the most disturbing dream ever. I used to have it all the time, and over the last few months it's made a comeback, to the point where I have it every few nights now.
In the dream, the camera (not a literal one, but what I see) is looking at my bathtub from my house in Albuquerque. It's about four feet away from the tub, and there is a dull roar going on in the background. No movement, no people, just my bathtub and the sound like the waves at the beach, only less soothing. Then, all of a sudden, the camera zooms in to a tight close up of the inside wall of the tub, right where the tile meets the tub, along the strip of grout or spackle or whatever those carpenter types call it. And the background noise switches to a high pitched tone, like the beep on an answering machine. Again, no movement, no people, just the lip of the tub and a beep. Then, after a few seconds, it's back to the general shot of the tub and a dull roar. And back again. This goes on, switching back and forth between the two focuses/noises. And that's the whole dream. I tell you, I wake up sweating every time I have it, even though it's happened enough now that I can tell what the dream is while it's happening.
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The pimp section-
Viola has nothing new.
Warren tells us about lab rodentia and describes how disturbing he found "Silence of the Lambs." The fact that he's listening to Elton John kind of disturbs me, but I won't say anything.
This has been a generally disturbing few minutes.
Ken
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