Given that I cleaned my house on Monday I find it a little horrifying how long it has taken me to clean my house again. Maybe I should dust more than once a year. It takes me forever. Also: there is a very different kind of baby-proofing for one year olds than there is for 3/6 year olds. My house was not very baby safe. I don’t have babies any more! It’s ok! Only… I’m going to have a baby for the weekend. So I should probably make the house safe for her. And the other wonderful baby who will be here today.

Usually when babies come for one day I make the main room baby safe and just block off the not-so-safe bits. When I have a visitor for a whole weekend the house has to be safe. Period. There aren’t other options. (I worry.)

I didn’t finish dusting two book shelves. The chance that I will do them this morning is small and dropping. But my bathroom is shiny clean! Even for people who crawl! Luckily I think we have two newbie-walkers coming today. But hey–they are totally still in the floor candy stage. Now my house is less likely to choke them. Go me.

(I have older kids who have embraced the tiny choking-hazard-toys with a vengeance. Cleaning up enough to be baby safe is work.)

Sarah–this is why I told you that planned visits involve much more stress and anxiety than surprise visits. When I plan for a while around someone coming… I always add extra work to myself. Oh I should clean _____ before they come over. When I don’t know someone is coming and they surprise me then I have to just roll with my house being what it is and I don’t have the adrenaline surge of “Must. Not. Look. Bad. Must. Clean. Shit. Oh. No. Get. In Trouble.” It really is that choppy, thus the periods. I’m not sure why my thinking gets so choppy on that topic, it’s almost like a stutter.

I think I read too many threads on mothering.com about people getting harassed by CPS if their houses were just barely out of line. I am absolutely terrified of people finding out I don’t clean enough. Whatever “enough” means.

I clean enough. My kids aren’t living in squalor. CPS isn’t worried about me. I’ve lived in squalor. I know the difference. I have never lived in self-created squalor. I have always been too afraid, deep in my belly, of the consequences. I fucking clean. I have gotten myself out of a lot of trouble by being the one to volunteer first for clean up.

“If there is work to be done you had better get out of Lenora’s way. She’s going to do it.”

It remains one of the sweetest compliments I have ever received.

My shrink says I am “highly unusual” in the degree to which I use cleaning to get people to like me. I explained that my early relationship with Jenny involved a lot of me coming over to help her clean her room and I *still* go to my friends houses to clean on a regular basis. She had this weird shocked expression. “Do you understand that people just don’t do that? Cleaning the homes of their friends. That is very unusual. You are nice.” *shrug* I’ve been doing it all my life. How the hell else do people make friends?

Many of my relationships have been cemented by the fact that I don’t judge anyone morally for living in mess. I view it as a logistical problem. Most people who have more things than they know what to do with hit a point where their brain can no longer see the larger pattern and they can’t organize the stuff any more. I don’t view that as a moral failing at all. It is about the fact that most people have a hard time visualizing a large and complex system with many sub-pieces. I can walk into any house and immediately start visualizing how and where storage should go and which items should be stored how because of bulk and quantity.

Sometimes I feel like I think in store-display-guides. (I worked retail for a while.) I can organize fucking anything. And I’m quick too.

I have learned to appreciate that I have an actual gift in this department. Many people feel completely helpless and scared when they have to start organizing. They can’t see the system and they don’t know what to do. That’s hard. I don’t handle it very well when I feel like I’m in limbo and I don’t know what to do. Emotionally it is draining and that makes dealing with the situation incrementally harder as time goes by.

Life keeps happening. Cleaning can get overwhelming pretty fast if you don’t keep a handle on it. So when my friends get overwhelmed and they ask me for help of-fucking-course I help. This is a task that is easier-than-usual for me. Why wouldn’t I just do it to be helpful?

I think it is kind of hilarious how much cleaning is part of my identity. I want to be useful. When people invite me over and give me carte blanche to reorganize part of their house… my little heart goes pitter patter. Really?! I can! Whoohooo!

My shrink says I have to start charging for the service though. We’ll see.

Today I am feeling really lucky. Not only do I get my Jenny and not only do I get to meet my little niece FOR THE FIRST TIME we also get to play with another friend and her little boy. Us three moms have known one another for a long time. We were friends before the marriages and the boys and the babies. Now we get to show up each with our kids. It’s kind of crazy. Seasons of life or some shit. I’ve known Jenny since I was twelve. I met Miss L when I was…18? 19? 20? Something like that. Our lives are on similar tracts.

Only Jenny lives in Scotland now. That was NOT part of my plan. But, life laughs at my plan. She’s very happy where she is. So mostly I’m supportive. I keep my thoughts limited to my head or the occasional blog post where I’m not even that whiny. I miss her. I’m sorry we don’t get to spend more time together. But life works that way sometimes. This way my kids will get to have the experience of having a lodestone in Scotland. That’s cool too. We will get back to Scotland for more visiting. We talk online. It’s ok. But I miss her.

The house across from mine is for sale. Someone I love should buy it.

I still carry around a note from Noah in my wallet. “I have permission to be here”. He officially signed it and everything. It’s official. I have permission to be here.

Sometimes I acknowledge that it isn’t fair that I expect other people to invite me into their lives so hard. You can’t do it once and think that I will keep showing up. I assume people are better without me. I assume that knowing me just brings disruption and pain. I know that the things I talk about hurt people. And I’m not going to stop talking.

I kind of expect that eventually I will drive everyone away and I will find out that being alone as an adult is very different than being alone as a child where there are people who are legally required to check on you once in a while.

I think I clean so much because I’m trying to wash my sins away. Maybe if I clean enough it will make up for how bad I am. Maybe they won’t notice that I am not actually good enough for them. I clean enough to pass for a member of the middle class. Surely that means I’m good enough to stay.

I will probably never feel like I belong any where. Not a place and not in a relationship. I’m buying a temporary pass. It’s different than “belonging”. If I don’t work hard enough my pass will be revoked.

I want these people to like me so much. And I know that most of my social problems are my own damn fault. I have no one to blame but me for people disliking me.

I’m “aware” that most of the people who love me “wouldn’t care” if I stopped obsessing about cleaning. But it’s “most” of them. I don’t know who I would lose. I don’t know what the push back would be. I don’t know how the shaming would start. And I don’t really want to find out.

My friends who need help cleaning all have complexes around their cleaning stuff. It’s an emotional minefield. It seems harder to live with than my perseveration on cleaning. Yeah, I’m a dork. Yeah, I waste a lot of energy. But I get to feel more control over why people reject me.

People don’t get to reject me just for being “gross” any more. They have to have more of a reason than that. It’s important to me. When I was a child I regularly had other kids be told they couldn’t play with me because I was gross. I was literally physically dirty. I never cared for my hair properly–I didn’t know how. I had head lice over and over. That was when my mom started keeping my hair really short.

I clean because I have such vivid memories of those mothers yanking their kids away from me and saying clearly, “Ew. Stay away from dirty children. They have bugs.” Then they sneer.

Stay away from people like me. You might get dirty. You might get corrupted.

Noah is reading my book. He has positive things to say so far. But he’s very biased. He’d like to get laid again someday. (I’m teasing. Sorta.)

I need to write the bibliography. I haven’t started. I’ve been cleaning instead. See how this goes?

It will be a good day as soon as I stop crying. I’m not going to have problems today. I don’t need to be so afraid. No one will be showing up with their white gloves to get mad at me for not finishing the dusting.

It will be a nice visit. Hopefully some year I can get rid of this pervasive feeling that these lovely ladies should be spending their time alone together without me because I am just so difficult. Things are easier without me.

It’s not true. But I feel like it is true. Anything could be without me. Everything is better without me. I say that and think that and in walks my Shanna. She saw me crying and said, “Can I come in? I want to help you feel better.” I feel ashamed that she sees so much crying.

Time to run away. I need to hear about Shanna’s beauty sleep.