The chronic malcontent cleans house

In summer 1977, I was an immature twenty-year-old, recently flown the nest in favor of sunny Los Angeles to find my fortune among the stars and palm trees. I was unaware that in 1977, NASA launched two school bus-sized spacecraft, Voyager 1 in September and Voyager 2 in August, aimed for Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and beyond. The most concrete memory I have of the word Voyager is the ridiculous revelation in the 1979 Star Trek movie that the enemy V'Ger is actually Earth's Voyager 6. That sounds less ridiculous to me today, given, well, you know, everything.

PBS showed an update a couple weeks ago of the Voyager mission. I was surprisingly moved by the journeys of the intrepid spacecraft, chugging along toward deep space with their primitive computer brains. Any number of times, they could have been lost, but they both successfully matriculated—they have crossed the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space. Off they go, like kids to college. We will never see them again, obviously, and they are having a harder and harder time phoning home. Eventually the signals will be too faint to hear.

Both Voyager spacecraft carry copies of a twelve-inch disc known as the Golden Record, crammed with as much data as NASA engineers could fit on a round gold-plated piece of copper. The Golden Record contains images and music, math and science—humankind's achievements (as of 1977, that is).

The Golden Records are a message to the universe that we existed, we were here. The discs should last at least a billion years, long after the human species has destroyed its habitat and gone extinct. I get a little weepy when I imagine some far away alien child finding a gold record buried in its backyard, figuring out how to play the disc, and discovering Chuck Berry, many light years from Earth. Oh, Carol, don't let him steal your heart away!

I'm back in the present. Today rain and sun have battled for supremacy. That is how we know it is almost spring here in the Pacific Northwest. Despite the 45°F temperature, I tore down some of the plastic sheeting that protected us from the worst of the east wind. I opened multiple windows.

When I can't figure out what to do next, I embark on a cleaning binge. I started with the bathroom, on the assumption that my effort will be most obvious in the smallest room. It's good I did. Under the cat's cozy fleece window seat in the bathroom were layers of moldy wet towels. Gross. No wonder my sinuses are constantly clogged.

After throwing all the moldy towels in the washer ($2.00 to wash, $2.00 to dry), I tackled the bedroom rug with my old Tidy Maid, something I do a few times a year. However, I soon noticed I wasn't having much success—the machine was not hoovering! Argh. I diagnosed the problem with a flashlight: The vacuum cleaner was gagging on a gargantuan hairball stuck in its craw, I mean, its hose, halfway between the entry and exit.

Oh, yippee, a rare chance to use my human ingenuity to solve a domestic problem! Rare because I so rarely do anything domestic besides cooking and eating food. Time to exercise the calcifying brain cells. I got busy strategizing my approach. Yes, in case you are wondering, I remembered to unplug the vacuum cleaner before I started poking around with metal tools.

First, I tried the cat's wooden-dowel play stick (good for making mysterious under-the-rug creatures that are super fun to pounce on . . . so it seems, I mean, not that I would know). The stick was too short. Next, I tried an untwisted and unbent hanger, repurposed to catch and pull out the hair clog. No luck. Both the stick and the hanger were too weak and too short. Hmmm. I know that feeling. I debated doing a Cesarean on the plastic hose, but wasn't sure I could duct-tape the thing back up successfully. Thinking, thinking . . . a-ha! The broom! The broom handle turned out to be the right length, weight, and thickness to shove that clog down the tube and into the belly of the machine. Because I had removed the dust bag, leaving only the gaping exit hole, I witnessed the birth. I even helped, although sadly, the clog came apart in chunks. Eeeww. I thought maybe I had sucked up a cat toy. Nope. The clog was just a solid mass of cat hair, dust, and detritus. After the hairball was ejected, the vacuum cleaner sucked like a dream. Back to work.

While I vacuumed (multitasking!), I washed a load of bed linens and miscellaneous t-shirts and socks (another $4.00). Only items made from synthetics ever truly get dry in this dryer. I often must festoon my apartment with slightly damp clothing and towels. Today when I pulled the mass of laundry from the dryer, I could tell right away that it was nowhere near dry. What gives? I discovered that every single item—fitted sheet, pillowcases, socks, towels, underwear, t-shirts—had all somehow magically been sucked inside the duvet cover. Not a single thing remained. Everything was neatly bundled in a sodden heap inside the giant pillowcase. I couldn't have done it better myself.

Doing laundry opens a window into parallel universe, whose inhabitants apparently sometimes need just one beige sock. I wish they would at least ask. I don't mind loaning a sock once in awhile. But they just take it. Sometimes they return it, sometimes they don't. Today they didn't appear to take anything . . . they just wanted to have some fun, I guess. Ha ha. Now the Love Shack looks like a cheap clothing store after a hurricane.

All these daily challenges that sometimes seem so overwhelming (I want my darn sock back!) pale in comparison to the challenge humans are currently facing. I can't do much to save the world. I can't call out to outerspace . . . save us, superior beings, wherever you are! My song is not on that Golden Record. In fifty years, heck, in twenty years, no one will remember me or my tirade about recalcitrant laundry and missing socks. Sometimes I'm sad about that. The stories I write will disappear into the past along with my bones. Maybe in some cosmic scrapbook, all our stories shine forever, who knows. 

I'm not twenty anymore. I don't have a lot of time left. Humans have such a short blip of time to make our mark. Not everyone makes it into the history books. I'm okay with anonymity. Just another bozo on the bus.

All hail the limited nuclear option

I've had a problem with ants at the Love Shack since I moved here over ten years ago, but with these warmer winters, the little beggars have been relentlessly staking out territory in every room. The kitchen, of course, would be an ant's first target: That's where the cat and I consume and spill the most food. In the living room, trails of ants congregate around the couch (where I spill food) and around the occasional pile of cat barf that blends into the rug so I don't see it.

In the bedroom, as I believe I have previously mentioned, the ants found an art project I did some years ago, which consisted of large jellybeans glued to a frame. I forget what the frame was framing; it was the colorful jellybeans that I liked, especially when sprayed with clear lacquer so they were bright and shiny. Like brand new jellybeans! Apparently, the lacquer on one of the beans finally disintegrated, thus opening the door to a swarm of ants, who marched out of the crack between the ceiling and the wall to raid the sugar in the jellybeans. This plundering of my art must have been going on for years, judging by the trail the ants left behind. I never knew; it was all happening up near the ceiling, and really, who checks for ants up near the ceiling?

And then, the bathroom, which you would think would be uninteresting to an ant, but I've bemoaned the sad fact that ants have congregated on my toothbrush before. Lately, a few scouts can be found wandering in the empty tub, for what reason I do not know. Lousy beggars.

Anyway, all that was to say, I've had a few problems with ants. I've been using bait traps, and that worked for a time, but after a while, I think the ant nests developed an immunity, like Portlanders develop an immunity to rain. One day a few months ago after feeling particularly dejected at ants biting the back of my neck, in my typical malcontented fashion, I happened to mention the situation to my friend Carlita. She recommended a product to spray inside and outside the Love Shack. I got some of that product. I sprayed. Carlita, I can't thank you enough. All hail the limited nuclear option!

For a day or two after I sprayed the window by the cat food, the ants were wobbling around like the walking dead. Then they all keeled over, like they had been mowed down with an unseen fist. With glee I swept up their tiny desiccated carcasses into little piles. The next day I swept up more! Ants fell out of the sky into the cat's water and floated there in little clumps, stiff and lifeless. A few desperate ants crawled up my shirt to lodge a complaint on my head, to no avail, of course. Once you've killed, it gets easier to kill again, I've heard. (Did you know ants smell rather pungent when you shmush them?)

Hallelujah, is all I can say. Yeah, it's a bit toxic, especially if you spray into the wind, but it's worth giving up some brain cells to finally beat back the relentless hordes. I'm thinking of taking up a foreign language to offset the loss of neurons, hoping to stave off Alzheimer's a little longer. Russian, maybe, or Spanish. (And if that ploy doesn't work, at least it will be easier to communicate with the CNAs in the nursing home. Although, who will be left standing to send me to a nursing home, I wonder? I live alone, so odds are nobody will know if I descend into dementia. But while I sit around wondering what day it is, at least the Love Shack will be ant free!)

The old gray maternal parental unit floats on the stream of life

Today I've been cleaning in preparation for the arrival of my sister. She's coming in tomorrow evening from Boston for a long weekend in Portland. I hope she notices that I cleaned the white squares on the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor. I also baked some chicken in the ancient oven in case she feels like nibbling some desiccated poultry while she's here. I hope the smoke dissipates overnight. Tomorrow I'll stir up some dust with my like-new vacuum cleaner. She'll like that, I bet.

Eddie, my cat, lies on my lap while I'm trying to type. He looks up at me and says what he often says, "Do you work here?" It's almost as plain as that Internet cat that says, "Hey." Yep, Eddie talks. I'm not sure what he's wanting... a drink, maybe? A back rub? To be a guest blogger?

Here, dude. You take over.

He apparently wanted a back rub. I complied, and now he's enjoying a snack in his personal lounge (a built-in sideboard in the kitchen, complete with bird-watching window, three entrees, a huge jug of water, and two containers of well-mown hand-grown oat grass. I should have such a life.)

Tonight an odd thing happened. My cell phone buzzed. That in itself is odd, because I rarely get phone calls on my cell phone. Odder still: It was my mother. Wha–?

"Hi Mom," I said guardedly.

She said, "Where are you?"

I said, "Where am I supposed to be?"

"Aren't you picking up your sister at the airport?"

"No, Mom, that's tomorrow night."

"Really? What day is it? Thursday?"

"No, Mom, today is Wednesday."

"Are you sure? I don't get a newspaper anymore, so..."

She sounded chagrined and just a tiny bit worried as she realized her error. I am feeling perplexed and slightly unnerved. I get that she loses track of the days. That's easy to do when you are retired. Or self-employed.

I wonder, is this a sign of a pattern, a portent, a harbinger of things to come? Or is this just a one-off, put it down to her carefree retired lifestyle and the excitement of seeing her youngest daughter? I hope she doesn't flagellate herself with this episode. Well, at the rate things are going, she might not even remember it tomorrow. I don't know if that is looking on the bright side or the dark side.

There's a certain relaxation that can come with old age, I think, for some old folks, anyway. I worked for a brief time as an activities director at a care center, and I met many interesting people. Most couldn't walk. Many couldn't talk. Some were anxious and worried. And some cruised through their remaining days, drifting blissfully along on the stream of life, from ice cream cone to nap to chocolate cake to ragtime music to family visit to fresh flowers to more ice cream, through the clockless days, winding down gently to death. I wouldn't mind going out like that, floating on the breeze.

Isn't a lovely day? Too bad I can't let myself enjoy it.

It's spring for another day in Portland, and then we are back to the norm (rain). Rain is our year-round season. The only thing that varies is the temperature and how much wind there might be. We have jokes in Oregon about the rain: Oregonians don't tan; they rust. It's close to the truth. Besides some rust, I have a fine layer of moss on my formerly black Ford Focus. I'm sure if I sat outside for a week, I too would be coated with a patina of green fuzz.

With my windows open, I can hear the season unfolding. Loudly. The intermittent buses might as well be driving through my living room; their roaring drowns out my music, my television, the birds twittering, the cat yowling. On top of that, something new: The modern buses are equipped with an external loudspeaker. From it, a mechanical female voice echoes all day and late into the night: The bus is turning. The bus is turning. I assume this announcement is to warn pedestrians, cyclists, and stray dogs that the driver is blindly turning left, so if you are in the crosswalk, you'd better scoot. Bus drivers are known for running down peds in crosswalks here, so this loud proclamation is probably a good thing. But I think it is influencing my dreams. Run! The bus is turning! 

My sister has been pestering me for a year to turn the Hellish Handbasket blog into an ebook. Now that the dissertation adventure is over, it seems like it might be time. Plus, I don't have any work coming in, my marketing efforts have ground to a standstill, and no potential employers are leaping to snap me up, so what else is there to do? When all else fails, write a book. When I was twelve, that was what I did to feel better. I wrote stories in pencil on notebook paper and bound the pages with yarn. Fun! But I didn't have to earn a living when I was twelve. Just so you know, this ebook will not be bound with yarn or anything else. E means electronic, but hopefully not invisible. Stay tuned.

Also, while I watch for the universe to nudge me in some direction, it's a good time to vacuum my rugs, dust my shelves, and clear the clutter. There's really never a wrong time to clean, is there? I could vacuum daily and never eliminate the dust, detritus, and cat hair. If you have allergy problems, visiting the Love Shack should not be on your bucket list.

Before I close this post, I should update you on the ant situation. I had a chat with my little brother (a grown man of 50-something), who owns a house with occasional ant challenges. When I told him I often find ants on the back of my neck, he was appalled. You know that funny moment where you suddenly realize that the so-called normal life you take for granted is actually completely unacceptable to a so-called normal person? I had one of those moments. All it takes is an outside perspective to shift one from “Sure, I taped my students' mouths shut with duct tape. Can't think why I didn't do it sooner.” to “What, you mean that was wrong? Ohhhhhhh, yeahhh, I guess I see that now.”

So, maybe I've been too lenient on these effing ants, is what I'm saying. I'd already attempted to take the offensive. However, the ant poison I made myself from Borax and honey did not do the trick. Maybe it was the container, maybe it was the concoction, I don't know. Last week, I caved and bought real ant traps at the grocery store. I deployed these fancy store-bought ant traps in various kitchen places and waited to see what would happen. I monitored them closely, hour by hour. At first, I saw nothing, not even a few curious scouts. Then one night last week, I entered the kitchen to refill my water bottle before retiring for the night, and I saw a swarm of ants mobbing one of the ant traps.

Was I gleeful? Actually... not so much. I should have been jumping up and down in a victory dance. But I wasn't. Instead, I felt guilt and sadness. What a reprehensible thing to do, tricking ants into thinking they'd found a viable food source for the queens and babies back in the nest. Instead, they will die a horrible death. And it's all my fault. I don't want to kill anything, not even ants. I feel terrible. But I am leaving the ant traps where they are. I can live with my guilt. But I'm done living with ants.

The ants in the Love Shack are taking no prisoners

I decided to take the day off. From what, you ask? I know, it's not like I'm working. But I spend a lot of time working toward getting work. In fact, it's all I think about, especially this time of the month. Rent time, I mean. Usually I try to fit the various non-work parts of my life in and around my marketing activities. I feel guilty when I take work time to replenish my larder, or wash my clothes, or construct poisonous ant traps and deploy them in strategic locations. A person can't work all the time. That would qualify me for yet another Twelve Step program, and I'm maxed out on recovery programs, thank you.

So, today's Monday, and I spent the day getting stuff done. I have a list. Every day, I try to see how much I can do. Today I checked the PO box (empty), and stopped by the credit union to get quarters for laundry. I hunted and gathered (at Fred Meyers). In addition to a slab of wild salmon and heads of organic broccoli and cauliflower, I bought some 20-Mule Team Borax (bwa-ha-ha-ha), as well as some sticky black tape to repair the leaking pipe under my bathroom sink. Lots of projects going on at the Love Shack.

Before I started the indoor projects, I put on my grubby shoes and carried my clippers, garden knife, and broom out to the front garden to do a little weeding. A little weeding turned into a lot. (And I use the term garden very loosely.) Luckily, the ground is loose and lush, damp from yesterday's rain, so the stray grass and dandelions were easily uprooted with a little prodding from my garden knife (which is really a small, serrated tree saw). In an hour I had created a dozen piles of weeds and dirt. My back was aching, the sun was getting warm, and I had had enough. I dragged the big green rolling compost bin out to the front sidewalk. I filled the whole thing up, swept up the dregs with my decrepit straw broom, and wheeled the bin to its home on the gravel road, not far from the three metal pylons which are positioned to block drunk drivers from missing the turn and driving their cars onto the front porch of the duplex next door. (Long story.)

Then I took a bath, fixed the sink, and started brewing the poisonous concoction that I hope will rain destruction on the ant nests in the vicinity of my kitchen.

I know I said I wouldn't talk about the ants anymore. But I must tell you that I'm re-reading the few books I have from David Gerrold's the Chtorran series, and it's giving me serious pause. The Chtorrans are alien invaders, shaped like very large and voracious pink worms, who are not friendly neighbors. In fact, they are taking over Earth. Humans are hard pressed to survive. All their attempts to control the infestation are failing, and things are looking bad for the human race. Are you seeing any parallels here? Substitute small ants for large pink worms, and you get my drift.

A few days ago, I really thought I had the ant problem licked. I sprayed the kitchen counters with white vinegar (as suggested on someone's blog), and after an initial spurt of interest by roaming marauders, within a few hours, the counters were clear of ants. Amazing! I was feeling optimistic. Maybe I don't need the Borax bomb option.

Then I opened a cupboard, spotted a marching trail of ants, and followed them to their destination—the plastic bottle of honey that has stood quite innocuously in my cupboard for at least two years, probably longer because I rarely use honey. For some reason—and it's probably the same reason that prompted this years' crop of ants to seek out my old bottle of mouthwash and my stale menthol cough drops—the honey was suddenly a desirable target. Then I realized, these ants are way smarter than me. They had me fooled, they lulled me! False sense of security! Trojan horse! They disappeared from the countertops to fool me into dropping my guard. Then the pesky little guerrilla soldiers found a hidden path to their objective, weaving above my tea cups, out of sight. Argh!

After I nuked them and dusted their trail, I cleaned off the honey and put it in the fridge, vowing to turn their love of honey against them. All I needed was a tablespoon of Borax...

And then, suddenly, the counters were clear again. For two days, the kitchen was miraculously free of armies. A few scouts, easily sniped with my dusty paintbrush... once again, I was sure I had somehow gained the upper hand. Had they finally given up? Had the rain driven them away? Or the dust? Or the fact that there is nothing left for them to eat except well barricaded cat food and composting scraps in my bucket? (And my neck, of course.)

I actually bought the Borax today as insurance, thinking I probably wouldn't need it, that the ants had moved on, they were once again just doing their thing, scouting the premises and reporting back to their generals, no, nothing here, sir. All clear.

And then today...

I was lounging on my green shag carpet with my cat, competing for the little bit of sunlight that came through the window in the front door. Suddenly I spotted movement over by the wall. Oh, no! I ran for the dusting bucket, brandishing my paintbrush like an AK-47. My cat sat some distance away and watched curiously as I daubed the ant brigade with diatomaceous earth powder. Then I lifted up the edge of the carpet. A trail! Where are they going? What the—? and then I found the neat pile of cat barf, just under my dusty exercise bike, where the cat had left it, probably sometime during the night, judging by its color and condition. The ants were loving it, an indoor picnic on a green shag carpet.

I heated up the honey in a pan with a tablespoon of Borax and some water (and yes, I washed the pan well afterward). I poured the mixture into plastic tubs, poked holes in the lids, and taped the lids on tight. I used a marker to draw a little skull and crossbones on each container. Poison! Danger! Then I deployed one under the sink. The other two I placed outside in the dirt under my kitchen windows. Just in time to be diluted by a huge rainstorm, now that I think about it. Oh, well. I have more of the poison, in a jar in the fridge. Chemical warfare has commenced at the Love Shack. Enter at your own risk.

Tomorrow I'll get back to work. Right now the war is on. When I started this post, I found an ant on my monitor. Just now I found one on my keyboard. They are after my passwords, I imagine. It's only a matter of time before they drain my bank account. Leave me. Save yourselves. These ants are taking no prisoners.

If you can't beat 'em.... eat 'em

The ants in my kitchen discovered a flaw in the security system I devised to protect my compost bucket from marauders. I did not realize that the lid of the bucket, open to the back of the bucket, extended past the dike of diatomaceous earth I had erected. Thus I inadvertently left a convenient drawbridge for the army of ants, who wasted no time exploiting my carelessness. I entered the kitchen in the morning, bleary-eyed, to find a long trail of laborers marching from the bucket, to the wall, along the bottom of the cupboards (out of my sight), to some tiny opening behind the microwave a good ten feet away.

I made coffee and drank it, mulling over my strategy. For some minutes, I watched the trail and considered doing nothing. I felt like god must feel, watching the little critters trooping along the edge of the bucket. I could almost hear them gloating to themselves: Apple cores galore! Banana peels! It's the motherlode. We're rich! Our children are saved! Even as I imagined raining carnage down on their tiny heads, I admired their relentless persistence. I am pretty sure these little buggers will outlast me. Long after I'm gone to the big compost bin in the sky, the ant armies will be industriously scouring the earth for apple peels and rotten bananas.

Humans are bigger and (arguably) smarter, but we don't play a long game. We get distracted by the day-to-day, we lose our focus. Once you lose your focus, you lose your drive. Forward momentum dissipates along myriad pointless paths. The ant blows by you while you are gaping at the stars. And that is why ants will inherit the earth. Hmmm. Inherit? They already own it. We are just renting month to month.

Eventually I went with the nuclear option and rained carnage on the unwitting trail of ants. First, I took the compost bucket out to the green rolling bin and dumped the startled diners out on their heads along with the kitchen scraps. Then I moved everything off the counter, napalmed the trail with alcohol which I keep in a handy sprayer bottle for just this purpose (why else would you put rubbing alcohol in a sprayer bottle?), and wiped up the carcasses with paper towels.

Since then, my strategy is to go Hannibal Lecter any time I spot something moving. I hunt the nooks and dig into the crannies. I stand vigil with the rubbing alcohol AK-47. After shooting intruders, I carpet bomb with the diatom dust. I told my friend V. about the episode. She shared some similar experiences. For an insane moment, we cackled like a pair of Hitlers.

Do I sound like I'm having fun? I'm not. I don't want to kill ants. If there is a hell, I'm going there. After the most recent Ant Armageddon, I'm sure there's no hope for my soul. My karma is ruined for a thousand lifetimes. I used to care. I used to try to save scouts if I could, or at least try to flick them in a direction that would save them from drowning or frying. I strive to live and let live. I rescue flies, spiders, moths, and yellow jackets. With ants, however, I admit I'm engaging in size discrimination. Ants are just too damn small to save. And when they congregate, which is sadly their nature, it triggers a fear that I will lose my living space to tribes of tiny squatters. And I go ballistic.

Now I don't care anymore. I'm overwhelmed by sheer numbers. And it's frustrating to discover they don't go gently into the good night, these ants. They petition me constantly, in protest for my heavy-handed Hitler management style. They climb up my shirt (never down, always up, aim for the head, get her!). They bite my neck, they self-immolate on my stove, they sponsor tours to gaze at my toothbrush. I swear they dive-bomb out of thin air to infiltrate juicy targets. The only safe place is in a tub of hot water, and even then they rage at me from the shore.

I don't always notice their protests, which must be so frustrating for them (and maybe why they feel they must bite me.) For example, I'm usually unaware of the brave volunteers who infiltrate my salad bowl. My cat won't eat ants: He knows they bite. But my nose is useless and my eyesight is terrible, so I don't see the ants in my food, waving their little protest signs at me. Freedom from tyranny! Stop the bombing!

Should I abandon my kitchen to the ants? Well, do we really own our kitchens? In a metaphysical sense, you could say our kitchens own us. I mean, I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of time worshiping at the big white box. Whatever. Anyway, it would do no good to abdicate and let them have the kitchen. Because they aren't just in the kitchen. As I've noted, they are in the bathroom, the bedroom, and the living room. Last night they were mining something on the couch. If I looked real close, I bet I could see them wearing tiny helmets equipped with flashlights and waving little pickaxes. I guess I should be thankful they are happy to clean up after me. I just wish they would do it at night, after the picnic, and then fade with the light, like some of their insect brethren.

Well, if given a choice, I'll take ants over cockroaches or bed bugs. Any day. I guess I should count my lucky stars. One....two....I'm counting now.

De-cluttering the chronic malcontent

My apartment, which a former friend once sarcastically named the Love Shack, has one closet, and it is in the bedroom, just inside the door. I would say it is a smallish closet, based on my 50+ years of experience with closets. Not big enough for a Murphy bed, anyway. It's about six feet long, just over two feet deep, with a clothes rod at eye-level, and it has two shelves above the clothes rod. I can just barely reach a box or basket on the top shelf. It has a regular-sized door, not a sliding door, which limits the width of things that can be stored. So, it isn't exactly a huge closet. A normal size person could lay down on the floor and take up all the space.

Still, it's amazing how much crap I have managed to store in that small space. In anticipation of the ARC truck driveby scheduled for next week, I decided to declutter the Love Shack. I feared it would be futile, since most of the clutter consists of books, and I'm not ready to part with my books. However, I tried. I worked my way from room to room, seeking trash that could become another man's treasure, and eventually ended up in the bedroom closet.

A couple days ago, my Chair sent a message to all her hapless victims, oops, I mean, all her students, letting us know she is unexpectedly out of the office until Monday. Maybe it's a ploy to buy more time to review my massive dissertation. Maybe she's got some job interviews lined up. Maybe she has moved to Florida. No, wait, she already lives in Florida. Well, who knows? I hope she is okay. In the meantime, I am trying not to dwell on the millions of problems I expect she and the committee will find with my dissertation. I am trying not to think about time passing, tick tock. Instead, I continue my housecleaning blitz.

I took all the clothes off the clothes rod and piled them on my bed. Some of the garments are wrapped in old crinkly clear plastic cleaner bags. The cat immediately freaked and ran, I assumed to hunker down under the couch. He hates the crinkly sound of plastic bags.

Once the clothes were out, I could see the closet much better. Most of the floor was occupied by a small shop vac, purchased from Sears about 12 years ago, rarely used because of its unbearably loud roar. I think I've vacuumed my car with it twice, assisted by a two-mile long extension cord running from my back door to the gravel parking lot where I park my car. Twice. In 12 years. What would my life be without a shop vac, I wondered? Poorer, maybe, if I had any desire to vacuum my floor mats. But after a minute of contemplation, I realized I'd trade the prospect of toothpick-free floor mats for some empty floor space in my closet in a heartbeat. I packed up the accessories, found the owner's manual, stuffed it all inside the belly of the little beast and taped it shut. I rolled the machine out to the front door and parked it next to two paper shopping bags standing ready to accumulate other castoff clutter. Take my vac—please!

Next I tackled the shelves. Some festively colored plastic baskets held a variety of junk I hadn't looked at in years, judging by the pristine layer of dust coating everything. I dug under the dust and found things I have no memory of buying: shower curtain liners (two unopened packages! I only have one shower, and I never use it!), plus three unopened packages of suction cups with little hooks attached. Wha—? Maybe I was planning on covering the hideous beige Formica shower stall? I can't remember, but it sounds like something I might have done about ten years ago when I first moved into the Love Shack. When the walls were bare, when there were no cat seats or curtains or furniture, other than a refrigerator and a stove, and I don't think those really count as furniture, do they?

I put the curtains and the hooks in the ARC bag and went digging for more junk. Hmmm, lots of electrical stuff, odds and ends. An unopened kit to hang a swag lamp. I obviously didn't know I had that in the closet, since a couple years ago I purchased a kit from IKEA and installed it over my desk area. It's got one of those balloon-shaped white paper shades on it. One swag is all I have room for, so in the bag goes the old swag kit (much better quality than the IKEA version, I might add, but oh well). What else? Let's see. A glass-less, cardboard-less black and gilt picture frame, no doubt a gift that used to hold some certificate or other that someone at my former job thought I would be proud to receive. Probably a certificate testifying to the fact that I am qualified to teach keyboarding. Was qualified. My teaching skills are rusty after almost six months of non-use.

But wait, there's more: An electric socket kit; a black nylon zipfront jacket I bought to wear to the freezing cold gym and then dropped my membership but kept the jacket and never wore it once (too tight!); an electric alarm clock (two alarms but no radio, replaced several years ago by a similar alarm clock, with two alarms and a radio); a black shirt with too-short sleeves, made of 1970s Indian cotton gauze, the sort of fabric that looks like a wrinkled mess even after you iron it; an unopened spool of speaker wire; a 2-foot under-cabinet fluorescent light; and a cheesy backpack, the kind you get when you donate to the Sierra Club.

What else is in the closet? A box of paint cans. A wooden easel. My huge brown leather portfolio, with it's broken handle and carefully incised etching of a leaping naked man (Hermes, I think), and which contains all the illustrations I made when I was in my fashion illustrator phase, circa 1979. I have no idea what to do with all that stuff. No one could possibly want it, but I can't bear to throw it all away. And at the back of the closet, wrapped in a dingy off-white flannel blanket and wrapped with bone-dry masking tape: probably the most valuable thing I own, to me anyway. The painting that inspired me to become a painter.

It's a landscape, about 26" x 32", of some dark clumps of autumn trees separated by a slow-moving river, which reflects a lowering sunset. The paint is thick, the style impressionist. There might have once been an artist's name inscribed in the lower right corner, but if there was, it is unintelligible now. The back of the painting is covered in very old paper, which is cracked and peeling. A bit of cardboard peeps through, but there is nothing written that I can see. I'm tempted to peel up the paper, to see if there might be a clue.

The painting has been in my closet since my mother sold the house where my father died and moved to her condo. That was what, 2005? She didn't want the painting, or more accurately, she knew I did. She's in jettisoning mode, too. I think that is what happens to some people when they get old: They start giving stuff away, in preparation for their departure. Me, I just want to recycle some of my clutter. But not this painting. Someday I will have it appraised and if I can afford it, I will have the years of cigar and cigarette smoke carefully removed from its surface. Maybe someday I will be privileged to see what it looked like when the unknown artist first painted it.

I hung it up on my wall, half over one of my own paintings. It's nothing like my paintings, and yet, this dark landscape is encoded in my artistic DNA. I don't know why I didn't hang it up sooner. Probably for the same reason I never knew I had a swag lamp kit, two shower curtain liners, and 24 suction cup hooks. The Bermuda Triangle of closets.

The last task was to sort through all the clothes on the bed. I found myself wondering what the Style Makeover guys would have to say if they saw my wardrobe. Almost all my clothes came from Goodwill or Value Village. Mostly I am talking about jackets and flannel shirts. They all have that musty, dragged in the mud, then washed in cold water look to them. A few things stand out: the men's cashmere coat I found at Goodwill for $20 (warm! disintegrating!); a periwinkle blue linen suit I made back in the late 1980s, when I could still see well enough to sew, when I used to sew for a living (another story); and my black polyester bachelor's graduation robe, which I wore twice a year for almost ten years to my former employer's graduation ceremonies, along with the un-hoodlike hood and the flat mortarboard cap. Should I keep it? I couldn't decide, so I kept it. If nothing else, it could make a good Halloween costume.

You know something is wrong when ants gather on your toothbrush

I suspect consumer products firms are making products that require the purchase of more of the same products. What do I mean? Well, vitamins come to mind. How do you know they actually work? What if they make you feel lousy, which inspires you to buy more vitamins? Ever think of that?

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe humans can ever get along long enough to conspire on anything more complicated than texting a vote to American Idol. Something has happened to make me consider changing my mind.

Every day this week, I've found a little cabal of ants crooning in a daze on the bristles of my toothbrush. I shudder to imagine how many times I've brushed my teeth without checking for the presence of critters. (Ant-flavored toothpaste, anyone?) So, what would you think if you found ants gathering on your toothbrush? Wouldn't you think there was something in the toothpaste that ants found attractive? Like, maybe, sucrose, sucralose, or some other ingredient that by any other name would be just as sweet as sugar? Eew. I'm officially grossed out. It's not much of a stretch to imagine that dentists are in cahoots with Proctor and Gamble.

This isn't the first time I've had misgivings about consumer products. I've long suspected facial tissue manufacturers. It seems to me that every time I blow my nose, I feel compelled to sneeze, which means—you guessed it—I must blow my nose again. I have allergies to a lot of stuff in the Love Shack, for instance, dust, hairballs, mites, pollen, cat hair, and did I mention dust? I sneeze a lot, especially on special once-a-year occasions like vacuuming days. Sneeze, blow.... a-a-a-choo! Blow again. Well, a genius brain like mine eventually spots the connection between sneeze and blow... hey, maybe there is some sneeze-inducing compound on the tissue! Their slogan oughta be Pollen-infused Softness. Or how about, Fresh as a Stamen. Or maybe, Carpals and stamens, for those personal moments.

While I wait for feedback on draft one of my dissertation, I decided to clean up the apartment. I started in the bedroom. I washed the curtains. I folded the laundry and put it away. I stripped and flipped the mattress and replaced the summer percales with winter flannels. I swept up the little drifts of diatomaceous earth that I used a few months ago to barricade the cat's water bowl from the ant hordes. I moved everything off the carpet and vacuumed up the ankle-deep layer of dust, detritus, cat litter, and hairballs. I stopped every 15 seconds to sneeze, blow my nose, sneeze, blow my nose. My sinuses quickly swelled to fill up all available space in my cranium. Eventually I had to breathe through my mouth, and thus was able to stop sneezing for awhile. I don't clean very often, and this is why. It's an ordeal that lasts for about three days after I stop cleaning. The nights are especially long when one cannot breathe.

I'm not counting, but I'm pretty sure I've sneezed at least 20 times since I started typing this post. The mountain of used tissues takes up much of my desk. (I like to use them twice before tossing, you know, really get my money's worth.) Now my eyes are swimming. I'm having a hard time seeing the screen. It's time to find a drawing to illustrate my misery. And then I'm going out for a walk. The pollen in the park can't be any worse than the dust mites in the Love Shack.