Spring!

The housemates are gone, the friend who came to stay is gone, and I spent the last three hours on hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor the old fashioned way after decades of band-aid swiffer use. Then the bathroom, every surface bleached and sanitized, the bathtub scrubbed with heavy-duty cleaner. Every dish in the overflowing sink washed, chucked into the dishwasher and put away; kitchen tops and stoves cleaned after two months of neglect. Then the living room, hoovering every last stray crumb, sweeping stubborn dust swirls from corners and arranging cushions. Corridors, swept, mopped and Pledge-ed. Then my room, the worst for the last. Two loads of laundry. Every book taken off the floor, recovered from under the bed, recovered from cracks between bed and wall, and bed and window, (27 in total), arranged in piles of what-to-return (read-horrendously overdue), what to (ambitiously) read, what I MUST read RIGHT NOW. After I could see the floor again, it was swept, mopped and sanitized. In a burst of overdrive, I even sanitized my chair (leave antibacterial disinfectant on leather for 3 minutes and then wipe off) and my computer screen with special cleaner. Threw away three months worth of paper and met my desk surface again. Took out the trash. Superglue-ed (which I had the foresight to buy at CVS today) a piece of my shoe that was falling off). Put the flowers in new water. Watered the long-suffering Edith (my cactus). And put my aroma therapy burner to work.

And now I am at my desk, a little bewildered at this springcleaning fit, which came and shook me like a rag, and has left me now spent, with of course, the task du jour, my dissertation to hand in a draft before the final, before the morning. Procrastination, your name is woman. To think that just last week, at precisely this time, I was at the picture above, at the Cape of Good Hope.