It makes me angry. The persistence of the dust and the grime and the constant war that must be waged against the filth, makes me angry. While I am scrubbing or wiping, or organizing, I am mad at the inanimate surfaces all around me. Sometimes I curse them and tell them off while they are being cleaned.
“Oh, you think you can just hold on to this stain. Nope. You are going to get clean, you asshole.”
And then the toilet doesn’t even say anything back. It just sits there, wide open, mocking me, reminding me in it’s taunting way that my male offspring can’t find the giant opening of the toilet bowl, but can spray down every square inch of wall space and floor tile in a five foot radius.
And then it is clean and everything is done, and I pull out my earbuds and stop listening to Rage Against the Machine long enough to admire my work, and I look around and it’s so damn clean and great. I am happy for forty five seconds at least. I take a look at my sweaty ass in the bathroom mirror and get into the shower to clean the last bits of me that are left unclean before daydreaming about sitting in my bed and doing nothing for a little while. And then, as if there is a beacon sounding over the top of the clean spaces, my children descend, or the dogs do, and then I am yelling Rage Against the Machine songs, except they aren’t really the songs, it is just the rage and everyone hides from me until the next cleaning day.
Rachael Coughlin 