Dimestore Romance

So This is the New Year…

By Belynda, December 21st, 2009 in Other | 5 Comments
Tags: Blogenning, George Bush is a dungball, high-stakes cleaning, housework, laziness, New Years Resolutions

First of all, let’s just get this out of the way…

OH MY GOD HOLY SHIT YOU POSTED ON YOUR BLOG WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD AND WE WERE JUST WAITIN FER UR DOMAIN REGGY TO EXPIRE SO WE COULD ST33L UR AWSUM URL!!1One

Okay, with that done. Hello! I know. It’s been like a month or more. It’s been busy around here lately. But that’s a story for another post (or three.. since the Bloggening just started back up again and I’m already four posts behind. Damn you, Ian and Tom.)

Now for a word from your sponsors…

I am a slob. Actually, saying I’m a slob is like saying the second term of the Bush Administration was kind of a lame party. I cringe at the thought of pop-ins, I am comfortable with a level of “artistic disarray” that would make Martha Stewart loose her bowels into her neatly ironed chinos. I am… Godzillaslob. The best evidence of this came this Thanksgiving. We cleaned the house neat as a pin in anticipation of dinner at our house. The place was stunningly clean. Unaccustomed to such conditions, our two cats wandered the house crying mournfully and refusing to cuddle with us until the place regained its usual patina of hapless clutter.

To be fair, I’m a busy girl. Anyone who knows me personally will agree that I take on WAY too much. This year, in addition to work, I took three classes, wrote the first 50,000 words of a novel, and joined a Christmas choir group. Holy. Crap. How much laundry got done in this house? I bet you can guess.

At the beginning of this year, I made the New Year’s resolution to read/listen to a book a week for the entire year. It was more than I’d read in years, but I thought it was an attainable goal, so I blogged about it and started a Goodreads account to chart my progress. I’m happy to report that as of today, not only have I completed my fifty-two book spree, I’m actually working on books fifty-three and fifty-four at the moment.

With my first “NYR Challenge” out of the way, I thought perhaps my love of self-competition could cure my vile hatred of housework. Maybe, if I came up with a NEW New Year’s Resolution Challenge ^TM I would keep my house clean, my clothes laundered, and my sanity intact.

And here you have it: The “Enemy of the (Feminist) State” Homemaker New Year’s Challenge.

I hereby challenge myself in this public forum to commit to one hour of housework… every day…. FOR A YEAR.

Oh. Shit.

Here are the rules, both to keep me honest, and in case any of my six or seven dedicated readers would like to follow along at home:

1.     The victim… um.. competitor… uhh… Sexy Domestic Goddess (YES! That works) will commit to one hour of housekeeping per day for the period January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010.

2.     The SDG will record said housework (basic description of housekeeping prowess and time) on a blog, Facebook, Twitter or other place fit for public scrutiny.

3.     If an hour of housework is missed, it must be made up later within the same week. *Yes, this will occasionally mean seven miserable hours of solid housekeeping on a Sunday, as punishment for six previous days of doing f#%k all and stoning out on Warcraft.

4.     Hours may be banked within the same week. If the SDG does two hours of work on Monday, she may sit on her ass without shame on Tuesday. Bon Bons optional.

5.     Banked hours will disappear on the Monday after a given week. Put those Bon Bons to good use, girls.

Here is the part that will basically ensure that I keep my house as neat as a pin for the next 365 days.

6. If the SDG fails in this attempt to bring domestic order to her humble abode, the sting of failure will be felt in the form of $50 of her hard earned cash going to a cause she f#%king despises.

My anti-charity? As if it would be anything else…

The George W. Bush Presidential Center

As if that alone were not sufficient reason to keep to this resolution, here’s a little added incentive culled from the donation page of the site:

“With your tax-deductible contribution, you will take your place as one of the first to stand with President and Mrs. Bush as a Charter Member of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. When you contribute $50 or more, your name will also be included in the Freedom Registry on permanent display at the Center.”

Think of it: My name, forever scrawled in the pages of an unholy guestbook, alongside names of people who actually LIKE that guy.

I don’t think anyone reading this wants to see me fail this thing now.

Spring Fever

By Belynda, May 11th, 2009 in Other | No Comments
Tags: Ed, housework, nablopomo, redecorating, spring cleaning, spring fever, unlikely episodes of housework, why are the dishes walking away on their own?!

Ed and I hate housework. We will put up with abominable conditions at times, simply in order to avoid it. Sink’s loaded with horrific dishes? Meh. There’s always paper plates. No laundry? Who says you can’t wear pajamas to work! We’re probably more flexible about the rules than I should be comfortable admitting in a public forum.

However, every so often inspiration strikes, and we find ourselves moving through the house like a cyclone on crack. This weekend saw the beginning of one of our cyclone sprees.

It all started on Saturday. We were butting heads over the amount of clothes I own that don’t get worn. Rather than put up my usual “shut up you’re a guy and you wouldn’t understand” argument, I got hit by the lightning bolt of domestic inspiration and started throwing things into goodwill bags willy-nilly. I then shoved our unused television out into the hallway, took pictures of it, and stuck it on Craigslist. (I got a nibble on it today. I hope to hell the guy takes it!)

Tonight, I came home from work, cooked dinner (a lottery-ticket move for me) and after nipping out for gourmet chocolate for dessert from the new market down the street, I came back, did the laundry, and REARRANGED THE ENTIRE BEDROOM.

What the hell is up with that?

The cyclone spree from earlier in the week led to a surplus of space in the bedroom. When I looked at it, something in my brain made a sharp popping noise, and I decided it was a good idea to start shoving furniture all over the place. You have to understand, moving furniture is a full-contact sport in my world. I will lay on my back, shove at a fully-loaded dresser with my head braced against a wall while sliding the thing across the room with my legs, ass, knees… whatever. I care not for how I look during these spurts of redecorative ecstasy.

Ed comes by a while later to find the bedroom in a completely different arrangement from the one he slept in only twelve hours previous, and his wife sitting in the afterglow of the furniture rampage, wide-eyed like a cat on the ‘nip. As a testament to how accustomed he is to my batshit crazy schemes and fits of fancy, he sticks out his bottom lip, nods approvingly, and says, “Wow! Cool!” He admits he is very excited about the bed being up against the wall again. I’m waiting to get clobbered at some point during the night due to disorientation, but we’ll see how that goes.