Back to real life/"A Man Could Go Quite Mad" from "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"

We dropped daughter off at UNC-Asheville this weekend. More about that when I'm in a better mood.  I'm glad that younger son is out playing with friends today.  They go back to school later this week so I want him to make the most of the time.  Older son is at NCSU.  Dear husband is out of town. 

I'm cleaning house - all those things that I haven't gotten to all summer.  Okay, I'm making a small start at cleaning all those things. 

I just spent fifteen minutes doing research on the internet trying to find out how to get the shower clean.  It just gets browner and browner, and nothing I try helps.  The internet is no use:  "Use your favorite household cleanser..." 

I don't have a favorite household cleanser because none of them is any BLEEPING good!  Vinegar and baking soda?  Doesn't clean the shower.  Comet?  No.  Clorox?  No.  Tilex?  Just streaks.  Oh, and of course my asthma LOVES all these things (Of course I open the window.  I still get asthma from them).  Stupid internet.  Stupid people who give useless, NAUSEATINGLY PERKY, cleaning advice on the internet. "Just do this and your shower will be sparkling clean."  No, it won't you stupid idiot.  I've tried that.  More than once.  As "green" as I normally am,  after years of scrubbing fruitlessly at this shower, I'm ready for the most toxic air-out-the-bathroom-for-a-week cleanser I can get just to get this over with!

On the way back from Asheville yesterday, I was thinking of all the things I needed to clean and straighten.  A large part of the problem, for me, is that I get no sense of satisfaction from them.  Other women can be really pleased at how clean they get their closets.  I clean, say, "Good, that's over with!" and go on to something that I do get a sense of satisfaction from. 

I told dear husband and that I'd be better at keeping things like closets clean and organized if I actually found that Ifelt a sense of achievement from doing so.  For me, it's all discipline.

Younger son piped up from the back seat,  "Mommy, if you were that way, my life would be so boooring!" 

I replied, "Then I wouldn't have dragged you to rehearsals all summer." [I don't feel comfortable leaving him home after dark alone yet so he came along when dear husband was out of town - which was most rehearsals.]

He said,  "That's great because theater is aaawwwwwesoooome!" [He didn't feel that way at the beginning of the summer.  I don't have the change quite thoroughly in my head yet.]

Okay, my shower is discolored, but I'm doing something right!

I've known all summer that today was going to be bad.  After having my family around lots all summer, and after being around lots of theater people for weeks, I've known that today, when everything is back to "normal," was going to be like a bucket of cold water in the face.   I could either get really depressed about the next few rather lonely days, or I could sing loudly with John Jasper (played by Howard McGillin) in A Man Could Go Quite Mad* from one of my favorite musicals, The Mystery of Edwin Drood:**

I'm going to go sing and finish the stupid bathroom. :P

 

* I love the way Rupert Holmes puts the words together in this song - lines like:

Unblessed are the dull. One ceaseless, peaceless lull.
One wondrous night,
Storm-struck thund'rous light
Will cast me right

or

A sculptor lacking arms, a sorc'ror lacking charms,
A fiend who frightens no one for there's no one that he harms.
Whose clutches clutch at only desp'rate respite
From this dim tableau!

Sing along with the part in italics - it trips wonderfully off the tongue!***

** The tape of which (you can't get it on CD), I found in daughter's closet when I went in her room to get library books to return.

***  From shower cleaning to how it feels to sing the lines of an obscure song in one post**** - I just can't be normal.

**** It flows logically to me.

 

Comments

[Summer]

I am so with you. Cleaning is not my thing. I do enjoy cooking and laundry (only because our closets are professionally organized, so stuff is easy to put away), but other chores are so dull. I think I only like cooking and laundry because I'm very tactile, and the pretty colors and textures are nice.

There is a cleaner that can get the brown out. She charges $40/hour.

[Reticula]

I love Edwin Drood! One of our local theaters did it early this summer and it was a brilliant production. I also love cleaning though--when I feel like doing it. Got no advice for the shower. I can't get my crappy old bathtub clean either.

[M Light]

Summer: I don't mind laundry - which is a good thing since we have so much. I will want the name & phone # of that cleaner! :)

Reticula: I wish our community theater would do it, but we do family friendly musicals so it wouldn't work. If we did it, I would love to try out for Princess Puffer: "I've seen girls from gutter families/Catch rich men with fluttery ways."

It's easier if you love cleaning.