Nothing like having dinner guests for forcing a person to stop procrastinating and clean house. I had tried to do little bits here and there for the last couple weeks, but until I had a friend over last night, I'd left way too many things out. As it was, I never finished clearing off the piano, kitchen table, or dining room table, but I got the floor clear, carried out a few things that belonged in the garage, and pulled everything off of the kitchen counters (which had been piled several inches high in places). I feel like I made a month's worth of progress in a few hours. And to reward myself, I did almost no additional cleaning today. My goal is to get enough things organized and sorted so that when I do have a decent income, I can actually pay someone to do the cleaning around here. The few times I was able to do that in Charleston told me that this is a necessary expense to a woman with lupus. I wonder whether insurance would cover it. (Wouldn't that be nice?)
I almost felt reluctant to do some of the cleaning. I hadn't changed the sheets on my bed since a couple days before Mr X left, and it felt like throwing them into the laundry was washing the last traces of him out of the house. It's nowhere near true, because his imprint is still on every inch of this place. It just reminded me of the time when we were first dating, and he went on an overseas vacation that he'd planned and paid for before he met me. He was gone a day or two at the most, and I found an article of his clothing in my room, and I cried great heaping sobs over it. Almost three decades later, I'm a bit more used to his absences, having spent half of our relationship geographically separated for months at a time. It still hasn't sunk in that there's no promise of return this time. But in an odd, small way, washing sheets that had touched him helped drive that home.
I do have mirrors, and I had been noticing that it was clearly apparent that I hadn't touched up my roots since a week before he announced he wanted the separation. Three or four months worth of salt and pepper was creeping in, threatening to blow my cover and let people know that I am not as young as they imagine I am. Today I fingerpainted my head again, sloppily patting it down with dye. Not sure how it manages to fool me that it looks natural, but I like to imagine that it does. I can't see the back, so I have to hope that other people think it does too. Maybe someday I will stop counting time from that point, before the announcement and after. Fixing my roots is another step in distancing myself from my nadir. It might not seem like anything to you, but it will help me. I need all the help I can get.
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