I've discovered a clean house is not unlike the intricate sand pictures made by Buddhist monks. Their creations are work intensive, require a skilled hand, are undertaken for a higher purpose and will ultimately be destroyed by some assbag tromping through them with muddy shoes.
You see, for a very long time now I've wanted to live inside "Martha Stewart Living" magazine. Not literally of course, because unless you pick up the bulky Christmas issue, the magazine itself makes a poor substitute for you know, a house. I mean I want to live like Martha and her friends do. (Although anyone who has ever heard of Martha knows that woman has no friends. Those "friends" are a conglomeration of models and homeless people gathered off the street paid to look like they're besties with Marth.) I want to throw a summer solstice party replete with summer sun die cuts, hand-dyed umbrellas and organic strawberries that can only be purchased at a tiny family farm founded in 1803 in Montauk, N.Y. and whose shipping costs more than my first car.
In Martha World parties like that happen. Know what else happens? Personalized stationary, antique spoons, cement garage floor painted sky blue and stenciled with little bunnies, cashmere throw blankets for summer, picnics baskets so amazing it is as if NASA designed them and tiny ivory baby booties knit from virgin Peruvian wool. Sometimes I feel like Tiny Tim with my nose pressed up against the glass of the toy shop that is Martha World, wanting all of it but being able to afford very little of it. There is one thing that is very pro-Martha and very pro-girl-on-a-budget-with-Montauk-dreams-but-with-a-freelance-salary, and that is cleaning the house from top to bottom. Sure, my lamps are from Target rather than Tiffany's but if the effort is there it is bound to be just as nice, right? So I set to work.
Cleaning is nice in that it is immediate gratification. A tub that looked like a coal miner had bathed in it (the remnants of a spray tan) gleamed as white as a Hollywood actresses' teeth. After a thorough scrubbing the kitchen looked like the set of a cooking show, the den's homey smell came courtesy from a can of Pledge and some elbow grease. The foyer had a happy, bright look to it. All in all, the house looked great, for about ten minutes. Then everyone came home.
I stood helpless as the gleaming, Marthaesque kitchen descended into the mire from whence I had raised it as my father dirtied every pan in making dinner. My brain shouted out, "No! No!" when a cold coke can was disrespectfully put on the den table without a coaster. Hair dye was used in the bathroom and I swear I could hear the little black droplets fall onto the innocent white tile floor. Soon, the house will look like it always has, a little worn, a lot lived-in and kinda welcoming.
It seems as if perfection can only exist in a bubble. With that bubble placed up on a high shelf guarded by mean, pointy-toothed dogs where no one with sticky hands or dirty shoes can get to
it. But, the thing is, life isn't like that, only magazines are. We buy into this idea that perfection can last forever, but it can't. If it exists at all it is for two seconds before some assbag tromps through our work and that's ok. That assbag is a friend of mine.
