Friday, February 8, 2013

Dirty talk

What's brewing, Netizens?

I've been feeling very positive about writing recently. Turns out, a figurative kick in the creative part of the brain helps.

Until a few days ago, no amount of proverbial kicking and prodding seemed to ignite my will to clean my tiny apartment, though. It was not a pretty picture, let me assure you. I kept sliding down a spiral of disillusionment. See, I always figured that at some point in your life, you stop acting like a child and kind of get your shit together and have this efficient household.

Getting your shit together means being a grown up. It means becoming the kind of people your parents were when you were a kid. It means that things in the house progress smoothly and efficiently. It means bills being paid properly, the subscribed paper actually being read everyday, pets being fed at the right times and having a well stocked kitchen at all times. It means periodical cleaning and never running out of milk in the house. It means taking out the garbage every day and changing the sheets and pillow covers every week. It means the laundry getting done before you have to reach into the laundry bag to retrieve dirty socks because there aren't any clean ones. Thank God, at least I have a laundry bag and not some big old plastic shopping bag whose mouth wobbles every time you throw something in.

It really scares me to think what will happen if I never grow up and have like a baby or something. I have these really disgusting thoughts -- will I forget to change it, will I lose it in a pile of papers or forget where I put it? What if I have a family and I can never teach them that you're supposed to fold your clothes, keep them in the cupboard and pick them out in a civilized manner everyday? What if they think that the norm is to keep a knotted pile of wrinkled albeit clean clothes in the laundry basket (or in my case, one of those big, blue, brilliantly shapeless IKEA bags) and wear them out of the bag till it's empty and that's how you know it's time to wash the clothes again. Small saving grace, though: I always, but always, make sure my kitchen counter is clean, because I grew up with the 'food is sacred' philosophy and I end up feeling really guilty when it's dirty.

When I was a child, and then when I got older, I just figured somewhere down the line everyone kind of 'adults up', stops messing around and starts living like someone's watching them. I was still waiting for my imaginary beobachter (*watcher/observer. But it sounds so much better in German). But I guess they're not coming.

So after this horrid phase of disillusionment, I admitted to myself, very grudgingly, that there is no magical, springy moment where you learn to be grown up -- you just have to do it.

And that's how my week's been. Other things? Cooking chicken curry for friends over a really fun dinner, landing a very promising internship, beginning to be able to see a still-hazy but certain end to my student-life a few months from now and really, really wanting a cat, thanks to this NGO in Mumbai who's doing such a commendable job and posting the most adorable pictures of animals for adoption on Facebook. Which makes me break into a string of incomprehensible, mushy baby talk. Which  makes for some embarrassing moments when I'm out in public, with sane, functional people around and I realise that I can't control the mushy squeals.

Eeeeeeeeee,
The Cyniqueen



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