what's she building down there?

something weird happened to me a week ago. i became obsessed with the basement.

it was a few short days before i was scheduled to depart on a much-needed holiday and there i was, digging out the most obscure boxes, sorting and weeding through their contents, while spinning around cleaning madly like a runaway ferris wheel made of june cleavers.

i actually chafed the insides of my thighs with all the brisk walking about and cleaning.

and, you know, i'm really not a cleaner. i mean, i've lost roommates because i Just Don't Clean.

and i'm not using the word 'obsessed' lightly, either. every night i was up until 4 am, at which point i would reluctantly admit that i should probably go sleep. i would then lie down, only to toss and turn as my thoughts yelled at me.

at the same time i found myself freakishly moody. tears and anger were always barely beneath the surface, and, at one point, as i swept maniacally and wondered why on earth i suddenly cared about my basement, an exercise my class did in grade 11 (?) english came to mind. we were learning the story of parcival as an allegory of human development and wound up doing a number of jungian based personal exploration exercises to compliment our lesson plan. one of them was to design the perfect house in detail. after our houses were completed, we were told that the contents of the basement were supposed to reflect our basic needs and subconscious.

i stopped sweeping up the shocking numbers of fruit fly carcasses and dust bunnies and surveyed my subconscious. all the stress of being alone with a demanding and often difficult child for the past month, added to all the ways i normally beat myself up and fret about what i'm doing or not doing, about my future, about my partner, all of it, swirled around me. i grabbed a scrub brush and attacked.

i couldn't even imagine making it to hawaii. i began to wonder if i was freaking out about the house because part of me knew my plane was going to crash, or something, and i didn't want to leave a mess for my loved ones. i wondered if i was losing my (already suspiciously tenuous feeling) grip on sanity. i wondered a lot of things, growling at any person i had to interact with and protecting the cleanliness i had just created with a vicious ferocity.

this tuesday i flew to hawaii on, i noticed, a surpassingly dirty plane, and while i resisted the urge to clean it, i did glower from time to time at the antique-looking crud seeminlgly caught mid-dribble all around my little fold-up eating table. i'm still feeling unusually emotional, but seeing J has been really lovely. we've been shamelessly slovenly, getting up late and wandering along the beach for hours. the trade winds have been howling, jiggling the coconuts on the trees ominously, and playing with our hair. everyone has banana, papaya and date trees in their yards like we in canada may have spruce or cedar. the flowers smell glorious, and the water is breathtakingly warm, blue, and inviting.

and, to sweeten the deal, when i do finally go home, it'll be to a clean house!