like this and like that and like this and uhhh

the gall bladder and liver are connected. didn't know that. or maybe i did but forgot. anyway, they cauterized the connection after taking out my mom's gall bladder and it sprung a leak. bile was leaking all over the place inside of her. now she can't do anything but lay there in the hospital alternately in tons of pain or nauseous from the painkiller. yesterday she was much more coherent and we had a lovely chat about the goings on in my life - a fabulous float trip, the theater, and starting school.

she'll be okay. it's just going to take some time to heal. part of me, the Negative Nancy, thinks she might not ever be 100% back to where she was. no doubt she'll prove me wrong. she's like that.
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the second order of business is the lack of commenting on this here blog. i won't pretend it doesn't bother me. i like the comments. seeing that sad little "0 comments" does not make my day. you want to make my day, don't you?

so, at the end of every entry from now on, i'm going to ask you a question. if you still don't comment, may your undies be eternally slipping up your ass cheeks.
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cleaning has never come easy to me. my parents never made me clean anything but my room when i was little. my dorm room was a fucking nightmare when i spent that year in Boston. now, i only seem to clean when the person i am living with can't take it anymore and they start to clean, which makes me feel guilty and i end up cleaning, too. and then? i can't seem to stop.

Micah is a great cleaner. he actually buys bleach. and uses it! it was rainy on Monday, so Micah came home early from work and started cleaning. and fuck, did he clean. the apartment looks magnificent. feeling inspired, i bought new refills for my swiffer wetjet - they have a wetjet liquid for hardwood floors now! brilliant! - and went to motherfucking town on the kitchen floor first, then the rest of the apartment. it looks and smells so nice now!

(also, i bought a computer chair. a nice, cushy, supportive black leather computer chair, because wooden chairs are NOT conducive to spending lots of time at my desk. my legs and ass were always falling asleep. that has nothing to do with cleaning, but i'm too excited about it not to share.)

now it seems Micah and I are in a cleaning competition. because now that the apartment is looking fantastic, we keep finding other places to clean.

unfortunately, we've had a bit of an ant problem in the kitchen. off the kitchen is a balcony, and the door is always open so the cats can chill out there, which they love. but since the door is always open, sometimes pests come in. thank god no squirrel or bird has been dumb enough to cross the threshold, but plenty of bugs have, and the cats kill and eat all of them. except ants. it's probably the equivalent of licking crumbs off the floor to my skilled, blood-thirsty, hunting cats. boring. waste of time. there are spastic june bugs and confused moths to track! and you want us to kill ants? pshaw!

alas, the hunting cats have left it up to me to get rid of the ants. for some reason, the ants make me very angry and anxious and Micah just doesn't feel the urgency i feel in getting rid of them. his answer is always "we just need to keep it cleaner," and he's totally right. but also, maybe we should look into some sort of poison? please?

so, after buying several packs of ant poison...huts, i guess, i went to the trusty internet and tried to find some ant deterrent to keep them from coming in at all. because i am impatient.

turns out ants do not like the following:
-baby powder
-chili pepper powder
-cloves
-a mysterious substance called Tarro
-ground cinnamon
-boric acid (because who doesn't have that in their home? so convenient.)
-citrus

also, and this is key - there are two types of ants: sugar eaters and grease eaters. there is no way to know which kind of ant you have, unless you happen upon ants floating gluttonously in a puddle of grease or lined up noshing on an apple. I had yet to see either. All I knew is that they really liked being near the stove, walking up it, around it, and across the counters. They also like the dry cat food. (which, DUH, has grease.)

so last night Micah decides the stove needs to be cleaned. what he unearthed was fucking disgusting, and the answer to the question about what kind of ants were infiltrating our kitchen, those dirty little bastards.

the grease. oh my dear, the grease.

it was coagulated in orange-ish drippings between the stove and cabinets. it was splattered behind the stove. Micah, bless him, knew how to disassemble the top of the stove so we could see just how much grease was attracting those ant bastards. it was totally fucking repulsive - caked, black, gummy, thick - and i couldn't believe it was lurking there under the burners for all this time. the stove probably hadn't been cleaned since it was purchased, and i'm guessing that was about 15 years ago. thank god we had oven cleaner, because nothing else would have worked.

and can i just tell you how wonderful it feels knowing we discovered all that nastiness and got rid of it? i'm starting to see the light. i even used an empty spray bottle and filled it with bleach and water and lovingly sprayed down the whole shebang after we were finished.

i really, really want to be a cleaner. i first have to get over an innate tendency to not care. if i'm being honest about it, dishes lying about don't bother me. sinkfuls, sure, that's nasty, but even leaving one dish out just paves the way for more. skipping a week of cleaning (or five) will make the cleaning so much harder, especially when you have newfangling items like swiffers (wet AND dry!) that if actually utilized on a regular basis, would keep the place from ever getting nasty.

i'm starting to clue in. be patient with me.

and if those ants come back after the huge, major, will it ever end grease-elimination party we threw last night, i WILL go looking for boric fucking acid.
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your question, lovelies:

- how often do you clean? (and when i say clean i mean more than dishes - sweep/vacuum, dust, windex, etc.) what is your least favorite thing to clean? most favorite?