Today, in a fit of madness, I am cleaning the house.

James fears my cleaning jags, because I go a trifle insane. Generally I exist in a sort of distracted clutter, a piler of piles and stacker of stacks. But now and again, usually at certain times of the month, I lose it. I clean. I clean HARD. I am become Clean, the Destroyer of Worlds.

This is not an ordinary vacuuming or putting some books away, this is a sort of cleaning psychosis. It normally builds for several days, and bears no apparent relation to the actual state of the house, growing stronger and crazier in the basement of the brain, PMS-fueled, until at last the sight of a stray post-it note or unwashed coffee cup causes it to hit critical mass, and it emerges in a train-whistle shriek of “I am tired of living in squalor!”

Then the scouring powder comes out. James tries to help, but after an hour or two ends up fleeing in terror (generally with my blessing) and the beast is unleashed.

Having helped a friend briefly with a fairly titantic cleaning project yesterday, this process was accellerated greatly. Gaze into the abyss, and the abyss gazes into you and hands you a mop.

This is not, unfortunately, a process that can be done at will, or for other people, since it occurs at great cost to the management. I throw out crap at a truly staggering rate. I destroy. I reorganize. It is brutal.

But it feels so good.