Project 289 - Day 57 : I Vacuum Therefore I Suck? Hmm...

Wow a what a snazzy vacuum cleaner you say! Surely this is the confirmation we have been looking for that Andrew lives a fabulously hip amazing lifestyle, unencumbered by the dreary realities of our earthborne existence.

To which I would naturally reply - "What have you been smoking and where can I get some?!" But enough of your depraved drug-ridden existence. What the vacuum actually signifies, hip, red and funky as it is (and bought at K-Mart with the brand name 'Piranha' proudly emblazoned on it's side), is that tonight was Get Ready You Have a Guest A-Coming To Visit! Yes, a festival celebrated the world over whenever house guests are imminent, marked by frantic shoving of disparate items in any receptacle that will take them, vacuuming of all and every surface, and the long overdue cleaning of just about every thing really, all breathlessly leading to the transformation of a normal looking apartment into an eerie reckoning of every sterile Home Vogue you have ever seen in any and all home decorating magazines.

I tell myself every time that I won't succumb to this mania; that my apartment is well looked after and clean, and yet each time I become a frantic whirling mass of motion, cleaning, scrubbing and hiding with the sort of urgency the resistance used to marshal to hide Jews and Allied solders during WW2. It is nothing short of demented, and yet at the end of it with the recycling mountain actually in the recycling bins (yes bizarre I know but there's only so long you can call the newspapers and bottles spilling from the plastic cube near the kitchen, "Industrial Art Exposing the Degradation of Humanity in the 21st Century"!), the floors gleaming and pristine (no mean feat with carpeted floors I can tell you!!), and every last item neatly and artistically in it's place (or shoved into the nearest crevice), you look around, breathe a sigh of relief and realise.... you just wasted a whole night! 

No,of course you don't! ha! What you think is "Yes this was arduous and exhausting but I feel absolutely certain that now my physical surroundings are tidy, that my life is similarly crisp and neatly arranged". That is naturally the result of inhaling one too many chlorine-based cleaning products, but you ignore that fact, and glory in the fabulous perfection that is your life, for this night at least, and you await, with baited breath - clean baited breath, of course - the imminent arrival of your guest who will praise you and.... nah, who will not notice a thing and just be glad to see you!

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One important thing to note today - my Great Aunt Lizzie, with whom I spent many a fun and wacky moment growing up, and who lived an amazing life, turned 101! She is in a high care nursing home, and admittedly doesn't spend her days painting the town red, but apart from a treatable infection at the moment, is in remarkably good health. We fully expect to celebrate birthday 102 next year!

Pictured above left to right - my Nanna, Auntie Liz, my Aunt Helen and my lovely Mum