Whew.

Okay, I lied about that whole “weekend off” thing. In actuality, Kevin and I spent the weekend prepping his place for my move-in come September. Fortunately this weekend happened to correspond with a particular three day window that occurs the week before the Red Army invades, during which I become a PMS-fueled cleaning psychotic. This is very productive, since in this state, I am capable of incredible (not to say terrifying) focus and will spend six hours maniacally scrubbing every baseboard in the house, but tends to be a little alarming to those in the immediate vicinity.

So Kevin came home from church this morning to find me with Clorox in hand, about thirty seconds away from alphabetizing his cats, and said “Ah. Let me guess…you start a period in a week, right?”

“I AM BECOME DEATH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS!”

He poked his head around the edge of the door. “What was that?”

“Next week, yes.”

My ex used to flee the house during this state, for which I honestly cannot blame him. Kevin, being made of sterner stuff, got out the steam cleaner and tackled the carpets.

It’s another sign of his commendability as a person that while we were out picking up bins with which to box up stuff and send to live in the attic, he insisted on picking up a birdfeeder pole and feeder for the front yard. This is a man who knows the way to my heart…

He has already resigned himself to systematic repainting of the house,* as it’s still standard builder-beige, except for the dining room, which is a truly astonishing shade of deep pink that his ex-wife apparently sprang on him one day while he was at work. It’s the sort of pink that you’d pretty much have to smuggle in, because almost anything with a Y-chromosome will cower away from it, screaming like a vampire exposed to sunlight. There are many fine pinks out there. I am fond of some of them. Still, I defy even the most secure-in-his-masculinity male on earth to tolerate this particular shade. It makes me feel like I am standing inside a uterus. (Not MY uterus. MY uterus would not have chintz curtains.**) Still, painting of everything but the studio will have to wait until after move in–painting is exhausting stuff, and one can only do it when one has forgotten exactly how grueling it was the LAST time you did it. Still.

Overall, it was a very productive weekend, and we’re up to the “start moving non-essential stuff over” stage. It astonishes me that I still HAVE non-essential stuff after last year, but apparently some grew while my back was turned. I have been pretty good about keeping down the levels of crap, granted my teeny living quarters, but it’s a truism that even the most spartan of living quarters (which mine is NOT) will mysteriously generate trash bag after trash bag of utter crap that somehow was hiding in the corners all this time and why didn’t you throw it out BEFORE you moved, anyway? As my Catholic grandmother used to say when you started asking too many theological questions “It’s a Mystery.”

*By which I mean “Oh god yes PLEASE.”

**Many atrocities are committed on both sides of the war between the sexes, but I am firm in my belief that chintz as a weapon of war needs to be outlawed by the Geneva Convention. The curtains have been replaced with plain white sheer, and consigned to the outermost hell where they belong. The room still needs to be de-pinked, but one thing at a time.