september 8, 2001. We spent a huge amount of time cleaning the house today. I've been letting housework slide this summer, as there's been no social pressure to speak of other than dinner parties. Besides, the Boy has been away more & more, and I'm not quite ready to take over all the responsibility for the housecleaning. (Yet.) So basically, when I left for Toronto, the house was reasonably tidy, but badly needed dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing, etc. I've been succumbing to Toronto rebound exhaustion since I came back, and have essentially been unable to work up any desire to clean, let alone any energy. But yesterday I knew that something had to change: there were 2 months of books, papers, comics & magazines stacked on the trunk, a filthy yet largely empty fridge, three 2-foot high stacks of videos around the teevee, a complete mess in the Boy's music creation nook, chaos on the CD shelf, a horrid cavalcade on the desk, mold crawling up the bathroom tiles, a fully inflated air-mattress taking up space in the study, clothes in suitcases, bags, cartons and on the floor... Let's just say that the che was very bad. We've been operating on very few groceries this week, in preparation of a really big shopping trip today. This meant that dinners this week have largely consisted of pasta, rice, or things that come from cans. Nothing bad in itself, but I was seriously jonesing for fresh vegetables and breakfast cereal. Today we took out the food remnants and cleaned the fridge from top to bottom. It was so dirty that we psychologically disavowed ourselves from the dirt and pretended that we were just moving in. "Boy, i hope the last tenants lost their damage deposit," said The Boy as he grimly scrubbed the bottom of the fridge. this time 4 years ago: dress-code potty-mouthed homewrecker