How To Accomplish Nothing With a Minimal Amount of Effort

There was a lot I needed to get done this weekend. I’m heading out of town Thursday morning for business and won’t be back until the end of October. Mostly I just needed to clean and do laundry and organize, but my place has reached the point in terms of messiness to where you wonder if things could ever be the same again. The point at which nothing short of a monumental effort and a miracle is going to get things back on track. In the past, I’ve maintained a standing appointment with a cleaning lady every third Monday. Doing so helps me to keep things organized, because I know that everything has to be picked up so that she can actually clean. (You know…the old story of cleaning up for the cleaning lady.) About a month ago, however, I was out of town so I had to cancel the appointment, and I haven’t rescheduled so she hasn’t been back, and…well, everything’s gone to hell. I’ve behaved like a delinquent who’s parents are out of town.

In place of laundry, I’ve bought new clothes.

I’m overwhelmed.

My plan was to make up for all of those weeks of neglect over this weekend, but I procrastinated the entire time and did fun things instead. I’m a Notre Dame football fan. (Did I tell you that already?) Notre Dame’s literally last minute victory on Saturday made me feel heady and invincible, and also made me want to get drunk. So that’s what I did on Saturday, I donned my favorite pair of pink high heels and met some friends out at a bar. I drank a lot, and then I ate some of those tiny cheeseburgers that all the bars are serving these days. Then my friend got into an argument with her brother. One of those long, dramatic, drunken arguments that don’t mean anything the next day. And, then we went home.

On Sunday morning, I lay in bed and worried that I might be exhibiting the early symptoms of schizophrenia. I’m reading Zelda Fitzgerald’s biography right now, and in response keep lapsing into a hypochondriacal panic. I don’t want to suffer from mental illness. It seems so awful and sad. And, I know there’s that saying that goes something along the lines of, ‘if you think you might be crazy, you’re not crazy.’ But, Zelda Fitzgerald eventually understood that she was crazy, and that she couldn’t trust her perceptions. But she was definitely still crazy. And then Scott died because of a heart attack, and probably alcoholism, and Zelda burned to death in an asylum. I hope I never suffer from mental illness.

When I finally got out of bed, I realized that I was craving a vanilla cupcake so I walked over to the bakery next door to purchase one. The whisper pink frosting was piled so tall that when I bit into it, it coated part of my nose. Afterwards, I came home and watched Bad Santa. I was inspired to watch it by a drunken man I’d run into the day before while jogging. He’d looked almost exactly like Billy Bob Thornton from that film. He was clearly drunk despite the fact that it was eleven in the morning, and as I ran towards him, he suddenly stopped. Then stood still in order to openly leer at me. As I passed by him, he announced loudly:

“Sweetie, them are some pretty titties,”

Then as I continued past:

“and you’ve got yerself a nice caboose to match.”

Fortunately my eyes were shielded from view by my baseball hat, which made it easier to pretend that I was both blind and deaf and therefore unable to respond to the wino’s compliments. When I’d covered another half a block, I heard him suddenly shout:

“T ‘n A!”

And I burst out laughing. Which was okay. Because he couldn’t hear me. And it was before noon. And I was being heckled by a drunk who’d been apparently inspired by the sexy figure I cut in my loose fitting fleece pants and dingy, long sleeved t-shirt. I was clearly asking for it.

And it turned out that he really did look like Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa. And I laughed some more during the movie.

At around 4 pm, I realized that if I didn’t start doing laundry immediately, there was no way I was going to get to bed before midnight. So I forced myself off the sofa and into my bedroom. Once there I discovered that my bedroom had become a complex stew of sweaters, summery tank tops, dresses, suit coats, purses, shoes and underpants. Everywhere I looked. The objects draped and mingled like Dali’s Melting Clocks.

I realized that at this point, surface cleaning was out of the question. This was going to require some elbow grease and possibly a bull dozer. I needed to organize. Sweaters over here. Purses there. The closet would need to be straightened out before I could put anything away into it. So I pulled out the entire contents and layered them on top of the existing mess. When I was done, I took a moment to smile victoriously at the naked, white interior of the closet. Then I decided that all that effort had entitled me to a glass of wine.

When I discovered there wasn’t any, I mixed myself a gin martini (on the rocks).

Afterwards, I took a tentative sip and reentered my bedroom. I was immediately appalled by the new heights of messiness achieved from the closet purge. Fortunately the gin took effect after a moment and helped to soothe my ruffled nerves. By the end of the night, I’d managed to do three loads of whites and had packed my summer clothes neatly away into basement storage.

I’d also managed to watch Alfred Hitchcock Presents on some random television station, and History’s Detectives on PBS. At one point I got a little weepy while watching History’s Detectives because they were talking about the Trail of Tears, and I felt bad for the Indians. I blame the gin for my over-reaction.

At around 12:30, I glanced around and realized that my apartment was messier than when I’d begun. I tried to focus on what I’d accomplished and felt relieved when I remembered that I’d done three loads of laundry and had placed all of my summer clothes out of the way in storage. This sense of relief lasted until I remembered that my business trip, the one I’m leaving for on Thursday, is to Miami. It’s eighty-six degrees today in Miami, and my closet is filled with wool, cashmere and tweed.

What the hell was I thinking?

-EEK