Maid for Hire

By weekday, I am a pr guru, by saturday, a maid. Cleaning mop and all.

Why the production about basic household duties? Because I am fabulosity defined. And fabulosity and cleaning mop just do not sit well in the same sentence.

Anyway, mission accomplished. Clean floors (more surface areas for the flies to pitch pon), and a major furniture reshuffle has made my flat look and feel bigger. Less clutter means less surface area for my thoughts to boomerang from.

Its amazing how much I love feeling like I am in a continuum and not a small space (hence open doors and flies). I used to have a desk in the UWI Mona library that I would claim every morning since I was a 17 year old illegal user, studying for A'levels. By the time I actually enrolled a year later, I had already staked my claim.

The beauty of that particular desk is that it had a view of a hill with nothing on it except power lines and a track right to the peak. I used to sit there and look out and even though I was confined in a cluttered library filled with people by the time the poui trees started to flower, my thoughts would travel on that dirt track right up to the peak, and into the sky on a never ending continuum.

I cannot write in front of a wall. I have to at least be several feet from it.

I never knew I was a writer then. I just had to be in a space, that though confining, allowed me freedom, if only by imagination.

And so here I am, years later, knowing now that there are certain places that I just cannot write.

I am not claustrophobic by true definition, but my creativity is.

I love space, even though I also love to be connected to the things and people I love.

There are so many things, passions, convictions, insights that I had, that never really made sense, but as time has past, I have learnt to appreciate- and in some cases label.

Like domesticphobia. I knew from I was a little girl that I was just not cut out for housework. I would spend hours doing homework, drawing, painting and writing my "I am a girl, my name is___" compositions, but when it came to tidying up after myself, I just felt my father's messy habits were most practical.

I epitomized his mess as the stamp of genius. And he was even more practical about cleaning it up. He would pay me to tidy his papers and straighten things.

Soo.. now you know why I feel housework is fit for certain people who are entitled to being paid for it.

So, until I actually find a maid I can pay to tidy up after me, I am going to be obsessing about it with every swish of the mop, push of the broom, run of the iron, and completed wash cycle cuing the hanging out of laundry.

Selah.