Cleaning House, OCD style

My wife accuses me of being a slob sometimes. This is true. She also claims that I hate cleaning.

This is also true. But not for the reasons you might think.

As many of you might know, we recently put our house up for sale. And if any of you have ever gone through the experience, you know what that means: constant cleaning.

And yes, I hate cleaning, but not because it's dull, mindless and boring (much like 90% of television). I hate it because if I start it, I can't stop.

As far as I know, I don't have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (that would take too much energy from all of my other afflictions), where I have to turn around three times and jangle my keys in my pocket before I enter the house, or stop and immediately and do a push-up while singing 'Ave Maria' whenever a raindrop hits my head (wouldn't that be amusing, living in Seattle as I do?).

But somehow, somewhere in the back of my brain there's this nagging little itch whenever I start to clean. It starts out relatively small: I am cleaning out the kitchen, and I notice that there's a spot of grease on the gas range. No problem. I remove all of the heavy grills and wipe the spot with a bit of degreaser. Problem solved. Except... wasn't there an ucky feel to the grills when I grabbed them? I investigate and sure enough, there are chunks of dried whatever-the-hell Salome cooked the night before clinging to one tiny side of the grill.

I cannot abide this. That itch becomes stronger, and before I know it I am running warm water in the kitchen sink and grabbing a scrub sponge and viciously attacking it. 'DIE, Spot, DIE!!!' I repeat over and over in my head until I happen to look up and at the window above the sink and see a spider has spread a web on the outside of the house.

The grills are left mid-wash while I quickly run outside with a broom and attack it, but only then do I notice that the deck is stained with dead-leaf juice and needs my attention with the industrial sized scrub brush. But- ITCH- the grills are still in the sink and the water is turning cold! An existential moment of despair- where must I turn my attention to? Clearly it must go to the grout between the kitchen counter tiles and I MUST GRAB SALOME'S TOOTHBRUSH AND SCOUR IT MADLY while Satan whispers in my head that he thought he saw a rust colored ring in the toilet of the guest bathroom...

And then I crumple in despair. Overwhelmed, exhausted emotionally, I feel like Lady MacBeth scouring her hands with Derma-brase and shouting 'Out, damned spot, OUT!' While Salome is out butchering all the Thanes and various other royalty so that she may sit on the throne.

You see? Cleaning is a tragedy in the making.

It's all about mental health.

Shopping, Categorically Speaking

Guys, I'm wrong.

I apologize for this, but for the sake of clarity, I do have to admit that when it comes to shopping, women have it right.

Definitively speaking, of course.

I say this, because I believe there is a disconnect between they way men understand this word, and how women interpret it.

How many guys (are even reading this?) think that to 'go shopping' means literally to 'go to a shop and buy something?' Go ahead. Raise your hands.

You're wrong (but you're used to it by now).

Don't be discouraged. As a species, we're all entirely wrong. It's like when all the tadpoles in the primordial soup of life suddenly decided to grow legs and climb up out of the water and start on the first rung of that long ladder that lead to becoming homo sapiens. Somewhere along the line it occurred to us male tadpoles that it was a fine idea, in and of itself, but it could be better improved upon by kicking back for a few millenia and having the amphibian-equivalent of a 6 pack.

That's why we're behind the women on this, guys (As I'm sure you're reminded of this quite often, too). Because we're not as advanced as women when it comes to language. So if my neighbor Biff down the street calls me up and says 'Hey, want to go shopping?' I (strongly suspect he's gay) am assuming that there is something specific he wants to go and purchase. Usually something distinctly male, like a chainsaw or new hunting rifle. To us, that phrase is a well-understood male code: men do not 'shop', they go and buy (and then catch hell for it later at home).

This, then, is where the confusion comes in. Because when our wives or other significant women in our lives ask us if we want to go shopping, we're thinking of shopping in 'Biff-terms': that is to say, going out and buying something specific.

We're wrong (like that's any surprise).

My wife, Salome, is a Shopper (note the uppercase). She has a gift. And when I say 'gift', I mean she can take what would be a five minute in-and-out purchase and turn it into an hour long exploration of possibilities. To her, 'shopping' is not merely the purchase of an item, it is the springboard to a type of Nirvana that can only be induced by consumerism and the plethora of choices. I respect her for this, feeling as I often do like the typical Neanderthal trailing behind her going 'Meat... me want meat...' while she picks over cuts of sirloin, inspecting the date and cut, setting it down because the T-bone is on sale, picks up that package and inspects from beneath to make sure that it's properly sealed, and then turns to me and says 'How about chicken instead?' She'll then proceed to the poultry aisle to look for the best possible deal on chicken breasts, but will notice along the way that chicken thighs are looking fresh. It is then she will turn to me and says 'Breast? Or Thighs?' (yeah, yeah, insert sexual joke here), prompting me to make a choice.

It's great that she tries to include me in this. Truly. It's soothing to the ego, to be the final arbiter of the damned cut of meat that isn't even of the same species that I was thinking originally. But invariably, whatever I opt for, she will scrunch up her face and say 'Really?'. This is both a verbal and non-verbal cue that I am wrong and should immediately suggest the other. Quickly, I do. And I am the hero, as she puts down the package she didn't want and gives me a loving look. She will subsequently put the desired one in the grocery cart and wheel around, walk 10 paces, suddenly stop and say 'You know, I think I really want sirloin after all.'

Kind of solves the mystery of why Neanderthals carried clubs, doesn't it?

But they have it right. The dictionary backs them up on this, loathe as I am to admit it: as a verb, to shop means: 'to visit shops and stores for purchasing or examining goods.' In other words, all those times your wife went shopping, was gone for hours, and you were worried that she was actually having an affair (or you went and took a nap, fully taking advantage of your sudden good fortune), and this notion was further bolstered by the fact that when she returned she had purchased nothing, chances are she just went to a store- or a few hundred of them- and only examined rather than purchased goods.

So this afternoon, as we were departing Home Depot, having spent 30 minutes in there in order to purchase 4 different kinds of lightbulbs (it would have only been three, but Salome found some really curly ones she liked and spent a few minutes debating about whether to buy them-), we drove slowly through the parking lot. There, an older pedestrian couple started to cross our path in the crosswalk. Salome slowed politely for them (Yes, Salome does the driving. I don't want to get into it. Just... trust me, guys, it's easier). The man started to move and then stopped, realizing his better half wasn't beside him. He stopped, turned, and there she was, her back to him, as she looked at a display of plants set up in the parking lot of Home Depot. The man gave a disgusted wave at us, letting us know he wasn't going to be crossing any time soon, so we might as well move on.

You know just what his wife had said to him earlier that day, don't you?

'Honey, do you want to go shopping?'

Done.

I state this for those few who have paid at least nominal attention over the past few rolling, tumbling years. Your numbers are few, and I want you to know I completely understand. I haven't made much of a spectacle of myself in any way; I haven't raised my hand in class, or shyly walked up to you in the darkened gym while the syncopated beat of throbbing 80's music echoed off the walls, asking you to dance. I've just sort of... tumbled along in this quiet, dull way.

I've been the good boy.

I've danced to your tunes when you demanded, and treaded carefully when you cast your decrees for silence.

I've suckled your teat to receive that watery milk, adorned my mind with the thoughts you approve of, and carefully trimmed my tongue to speak your language.

And
I tell you now,
Your language has no poetry.
Your music has no beat,
Your lyrics merely praise mammon.
I had willingly given the best of myself to you, for the miserable sake of safety, and I am here to Tell you,
Now,
That I am done.

I've tried to make your values my own, and when I drew near to success, I only saw darkness whenever I had the courage to even take a tragic look inside.

So you want me to jump. Keep waiting. I'll do it any moment now.

Or maybe I won't.
Because I don't need to please you. I don't need your fucking games. And guess what? I don't need to prove myself to you. You want to see what I can do for you? You want to see how hard I fall when I prostrate myself, what depths I will slink to so that I can gain your favor? Shall I walk on my knees through the cobblestone streets?
Wait.
Just wait.
And wait even more.
And as you wait, if you dare complain that I am wasting your time, remember this clearly:
YOU have wasted MINE.

I'm done.

Oh, not completely. There is that pesky nuisance that we've all agreed to call 'reality', and I am not so liberated that I can disregard it. That way, madness lies.

But I want you to know I don't believe in you anymore. I don't want you anymore. I refuse to commit one single synapse in this once fertile mind to thoughts of you, when those 9 hours I've allotted to your grubbing cause come to an end.

I will smile and say the right words. I will walk with integrity beside you. All the way up until the time when I can walk away from you forever.

I've tried to be you, and found that I cannot be you, because 'you' are a negative. And you can never prove a negative. So I will leave you to you.

And leave me to me.

But don't worry: I'll shut the door on my way out, instead of slamming it.

I'm not inconsiderate, you know.

#3 razor? Or #2?

I need a haircut.

Not because my hair is long at the moment (though that is usually one of the major factors when one does decide to get it done), but rather... well, because it looks like a mushroom. A graying, brown, manure-feeding mushroom.

Let me explain what I look for in a typical salon experience I have 3 key criteria that I am now thinking of amending owing to the fact that I look like an extremely tall fungi. These criteria are, of course, in no particular order:

- I don't want to make an appointment for a haircut. That's just dumb. Like I'm going to say to
the guys at work "No, I can't make it to happy hour today. I have a hair appointment." I'd
rather eat bark.

- I don't want to wait more than 10 minutes to get a haircut. I've got things to do. Like, I dunno,
happy hour.

- I don't want the actual shearing experience to last longer than fifteen minutes. I get antsy, and
to be quite honest, those damned electric razors they use get awfully close to your ears, and if
you're not squeamish about being cut by it, then it sounds like a flock of mosquitoes (note:
a mosquito does not fly in a 'flock'. This is 'creatove license') hovering by your ear.

So where does that leave me, given the above criteria?

The answer is easy: Super-Cuts, or some generic Fantastic Sam's kind of place that happens to be close by.

There are two types of cosmeticians (estheticians? Salonicians?) invariably employed there. They are either Asian women in their mid-thirties and above, very very sweet, and yet struggle a bit with the English language. They also wield a mean razor.

The other type who works there is under 24, has multiple piercings and red-lacquered hair on one side and completely shaved on the other. As a general rule, she is slightly overweight. She also has a boyfriend named Dutch who works at Firestone and the two share an apartment and- if not a kid- a pitbull or mastiff. Dutch is planning on getting his welder's license, and she is going open her own salon, typically somewhere in eastern Washington because she's sick of the wet Pacific Northwest.

Please note: none of the above information is ever, ever asked for or in any way encouraged. I guess the thought is that if you're holding a pair of shears and scissors behind someone who can't see what you're doing, YOU get to dominate the conversation.

Regardless of which one you get, however, they feel that have not done you true justice if they do not mercilessly shear every strand of hair that sticks out from the side of your head so that it will only stand out 2 mm beyond your scalp. Never mind the fact that you said 'I want a trim' or 'Just a little off the top'. No. That thicket on the side of your head must go. SKIN must be seen. There must be SCALP or, by golly, they didn't do the job right.

So at the end, when they have you sitting in front of the mirror asking you if you want gel in your hair, and you're thinking to yourself 'So THIS is what a plucked chicken looks like...', you realize that you have:

a) Saved money because you didn't get it done by a true stylist
b) Managed to get out of there in under 15 minutes
c) Thumbed through an old copy of 'People' magazine for 10 minutes until they called your
name
And d) look like you tried to save $15 dollars by taking a weed-whacker to your head

You also realize that maybe, just maybe, once a month, you should set aside happy hour and make a hair appointment.

Just don't tell the guys at work why you're not going to make it to the happy hour. They can all sit around and look like mushroom-heads by themselves.

Maundy Thursday

Recently, I took the last remaining days of Lent and gave up something that I do quite by habit.

For Lent, I gave up praying.

Well, I did give up praying. But only for myself.

Once, while pastoring, I was asked by some people in a fellowship I led what I would be giving up for Lent. Not that any of us were too much into that tradition- mainly it served like a time to give up those things you resolved to on New Year's Eve, and then failed on. Sort of like a 'do-over' on New Year's resolutions. Some were giving up candy, others were giving up television. One young man vowed to give up Starcraft for 40 days (he failed miserably). When it came to my turn, I quipped: 'For Lent, I'm giving up God.'

This is not a particularly funny thing to say when you're a pastor.

But this year, during the past few weeks, I found my prayer life stagnant to the point of being moribund. This Lenten season was meaningless: I hadn't even been aware of it until I called for a client one day and was told he had taken time off for Mardi Gras. Oops.

The truth is, my faith has become so focused on me as of late, that it's no wonder prayer has taken a back seat to everything else in life. Of course, that focus on ME has to be there, doesn't it? I mean, what with our recent huge disappointment, and the uncertainty surrounding our lives and next steps, of course I deserved all my prayers, right?

I mean, apart from:

- A seminarian alumni dying unexpectedly, and the impact that must have on her family
- My grandmother, active and energized up to her 88th year suddenly taking a calamitous fall
- My pen-pal Samuel, who runs an orphanage in Kenya
- A co-worker whose husband has moved into the streets and taken up an old familiar friend:
cocaine
- The villages in Ethiopia who are struggling valiantly to support a school, a community, potable
water- all without any help from the government, except for their granting of permits once
they have collected the proper 'fees' that go immediately into their wallet
- My wife, who is currently struggling to find her own path
- The husband and father in our community who recently went missing, his abandoned car
found in a shopping center parking lot

Suddenly, giving up God wasn't quite as witty as I thought it had once been. In fact, it now seems like it was damned-near imperative.

At least this working conceptual model of God I've had in my head for the past few years: this tame, palliative, simpering God who grants our wishes in order to curry faith in us. Jesus was called 'The Son of Man' not because he had a human father, but because in his selflessness he taught us how to become men- pardon the particularly singular reference to gender- in other words, he taught us what it was to ultimately be human.

So for Lent, I've given up God, and my supplications to Him. They nauseate me now.

It's been a few weeks, and I have not uttered one single prayer for myself. And guess what has happened?

A whirlwind. Our lives are in utter free-fall. Foxes may have dens, but this particular son of a man does not know where he'll be laying his head next month, next summer, next year. We have bounced from Renton to Santa Fe to New York to San Francisco. We are awash in uncertainty- though not without safety- plying through possibilities and reaching decisions that are demolished as quickly as the next day.

And still I refuse. I will not ask for a single thing to happen for me. Not for now. Post-resurrection day that may change. But at least on that day, now that the blood of emapthy is starting to pump through my veins again, I will make one single plea to Him for me:

Don't let me sink into myself like that again.

Don't Let the Beauty Fool You

Charming. Breathtaking. A modern marvel that never failes to impress.

A shame the city sucks.

It is time to come out the closet and state my opinion on this city:

I hate it.

As part of the territory I work, I have always groaned inwardly whenever my work took me into this city. I could never put my finger on the reason why; there was always just a heavy weight in my stomach, like I've just eaten at Denny's, whenever I saw that on my itinerary.

I am in this city right now, and want to expel this bile before I catch my flight. I can do this, because here at the Lambert airport lobby, my flight was bumped and I am going to miss my connecting flight home.

Oh, St Louis, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways:

1) You are by far one of the dirtiest cities I have ever seen: you even beat Omaha, NE and Sacramento, CA in terms of grungy, ramshackle buildings and empty lots filled with weeds.

2) Your citzens are either smug, ignorant, or smug in their ignorance ('I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm sure that if I could comprehend it I would find it distasteful').

3.) After spending a couple nights in one of your more luxurious hotels (Cough... Crowne Plaza... Cough, cough... what? I didn't mention any names: I was coughing), I found myself wishing I had found a Super 8 or Motel 6 somewhere along the way. Here, in brief, was my experience at this 3 1/2 star hotel:

- In order to get to the reservation desk, if you had a car you needed to park in the lot behind the hotel. They graciously had one floor devoted entirely to guests at the hotel. Nice, except that the designated floor was on parking level 6. You had to find the elevator, take it to the lobby level, exit the elevator and circlethe building to get around to the front of the lobby. Carrying your luggage all the time, mind you.

- You have two phones in your room. It would be overkill, if it wasn't for the fact that neither of them worked. Oh, sure, you could call long distance (anything to add more $ to your bill), but everything else was not hooked up. In order to get room service, I had to find the number to the hotel, call the front desk, and ask them to transfer me to room service. When I explained how the phones didn't work, the front desk had this helpful question to ask: 'Oh, didn't they tell you when you checked in?'

- As I complained to my wife, I may be just a whiny American: one of those 'privilege/entitlement/'gimme what's mine since I paid for it' kinda guy, but I don't think I am out of line when I check into a 'luxury hotel' AND IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE HOT WATER.

Seriously. There is no exaggeration here. I got up in the morning, turned on the water in the shower, and waited for it to turn hot. And waited some more. And then some more. And then fiddled with the damned thing. Regardless of how much coaxing, fussing and punching I did, the water remained just slightly above 36 degrees. I call the front desk (from my cell phone, naturally) and explain the situation. No apologies, no 'I'm so sorry, sir, let me send someone to check on that.' No, here was the helpful advice I received: 'Oh, yeah. Turn on both the tap AND the bath faucet to high, and wait 5 minutes. ' 'You mean you already knew about this?'

Worthless.

Add that to the charming lady at the airport who tossed my luggage on the conveyor belt after I turned it over to them (never mind I had a $1000 projector in there for presentations) and then snapped at me when I pointed out that I'd only received one boarding pass when I needed two, as well as the first mate of our 6am flight who could not be found and a replacement had to be brought in an hour later, and all I can say is

I AM DONE WITH THIS CITY. Done. People must thrive on mediocrity here, or love the everyday surprises of what services are down on this day. I am not one of them. The only thing I find surprising is that people actually choose to live her, voluntarily.

Part of why I've been away

Anybody ever feel this way?

Actually, part of the reason why I have not been posting is because I have been trying to design my own web site. The experience is tedious, frustrating, with an occasional thrill. I plan to blog on that site, and then mirror those blogs here on Blogspot.

We'll see about the results. Seeing as how I know nothing about web design, we should see the result in... oh... late 2112.

But I've done the first couple of steps: designing a flash-intro to 'wow' the visitor, and thanks to my mother-in-law, have secured the web domain www.platypusking.com

I'll keep you posted in the progress. I imagine those posts will be short.

It's been awhile...

I doubt this post will be met with much fanfare: not having too many readers, and not posting for... um... an inexcusable amount of time, means that this new post most likely will not register a 'blip' on anyone's screen.

I think I'm okay with that.

I think I'll just make this a 'me' kind of thing. I'll heartily welcome anyone who comes along, but I think I need to ignore the fact that there may be any sort of audience; it doesn't do me any good anymore. It just leads to a performance of words, and I am hardly a virtuoso when it comes to that.

Life, as of late, has been whipping around so violently that it has reached a standstill: the virtual eye of a hurricane. It has been one long series of possibilities and questions: 'Will we be...?' 'Should we...?' 'If so, what about?' 'Can we afford...?' 'What is out there?' Move to one direction, and find out that it's not the one. Turn in another and discover what you've been expecting- really, what you've taken to be your sure thing suddenly fails to materialize.

And just like that, you're in the eye. Because anything and everything you've been expecting to happen isn't happening and you can't make it happen no matter how hard you want it to happen because you don't have the power to make things happen all of the time.

Here's the thing, though: you don't travel with the hurricane, though. You can't keep pace with the eye and wait and pray that it hits dry land and collapses on itself. You know that just behind you, coming fast, is the trailing arc of the maelstrom, and you have just these few moments of clarity before it all begins again. There's fear, but it's not a fear for your safety: rather, it's fearing where you may end up.

Here's what my moment of clarity is amounting to: you do, because you'll die.

A seminary I attended briefly a little over a year ago still has my email address, and viciously won't let it go. Not that I particularly mind, as often there is a richness to what I receive (unless it's around the beginning of the semester, in which case it then becomes a series of dull school reminders about tuition checks and early registration bonuses). Whether I was thrilled with their theology is certainly a matter of debate. But there was genuine embracement of community, art, culture, and courage to ask the big questions (what I found so fucking annoying was their stubborn resistance to even try to answer them).

Two days ago, there was a bulletin sent out, with the subject line an alarming 'Prayers desperately needed'. It seemed a former student and now a practicum facilitator had suffered a brain aneurysm and was undergoing surgery. The prognosis: grave.

I prayed. Not well, but then again, who does?

Yesterday, there was another email sent out, this one bearing nothing but the woman's name in the subject line. It wasn't hard to deduce the contents of that email.

During the night, she had passed away.

I can't claim any special knowledge of the deceased: I may have had a class with her. Then again, I may not have. There is a vulturish tendency, whenever a tragedy strikes, to exaggerate one's relationship with the victim (unless you're Job). A casual acquaintance who dies in a car accident suddenly becomes, once you relate the story to someone else, a close friend. A murder takes place a few streets away in your neighborhood, and you tell everyone you know that it happened right there, while you point at the black macadam running past your front porch.

The email had a picture of the deceased at the bottom of it: a lovely woman in graduation robes with a Colgate smile and kind eyes. She couldn't have been more than 26.

I am so sorry for her- so sorry for her family. All of those at the seminary feel a loss, whether they were close to her or knew her merely at a passing glance. Or not at all, like me. But it touches everyone because it is such a horrific waste.

I don't know if she was doing everything she wanted to be do in her life right up until the end (most likely not), or what good works she hath wrought in this life.

Let me bare my soul here a bit (the fact that few are reading gives me the courage to do so), and say that this terrifies me deeply. 'Dropping dead' scares the shit out of me. But it happens, and the shock and pain of it reverberates through the community so deeply that it even impacts those who are observing from the periphery (such as myself). And if it happens... when? What are the signs? Can you tell? Is it possible that you wake up with an inkling and try to stretch the day as long as possible, or do those last few things you never had a chance to do?

I don't know.

I've got good genes. Odds are I'll live a long and healthy life, passing away at a ripe old age with oatmeal slowly crusting at the corner of my mouth. But there are no guarantees.

And so, being trapped in this brief lull of the storm as I am, the questions that created the hurricane in the first place are taking on a slightly different tenor. It is no longer a matter of 'should we...?' 'Ought we...?' 'Can we afford...', but rather 'what do I want to do in this life, and have I done it?' 'What do I really believe, and what have I done because of it?'

There's nothing wrong with the storm. Not really: we all need these moments in life, for that is how we safeguard our security. But if it all becomes about nothing but security, pleasing the boss, fulfilling your quota, having a house and cars equal to those of your peers and nothing else... well, it's no wonder that so many people die with a startled expression on their faces. It's that last minute realization before the darkness that everything you've had no longer belongs to you. Instead, it'll be divvied up by the surviving relatives.

But that which you have done, those works that you have wrought, those dreams that you harbored and finally fulfilled... those live on.

The good is oft interred with your bones.