Unclean

I’ve been sick for about a week now – I have a chest, ear and throat infection and I've been a phlegmy ball of misery since it began. I’ve also been off work all week and with my wonderful employers offering "0", yes, NOTHING AT ALL, in the line of sick pay I’m a worried little hotbed of molestuous germ sex. However, my biggest worry hasn’t been my increasing bills or all the time off work, it hasn’t even been figuring a way to not pee myself slightly every time I cough – no, this week I have become finally and fully disenchanted with my cleaning abilities. My name is Cat and I have a dirty apartment. That admission hasn’t lifted any weight off my chest just yet but then again that could be because there’s a foot thick layer of dust crushing it and there’s only so far uttering Wildean witticisms about fashionable dust can take you before you start to displace tiny mushroom clouds when you talk.I’d love to blame the bulk of it on the cats, because they are infernally mischievous and spread mayhem and white hair everywhere – but everyone knows having cats should make me extra-steely in my determination to keep the place spotless. Sure, I can manage to keep the litter situation relatively well controlled but they’ve had no accidents since they were kittens so it feels a bit unfair to take the credit for that one. I could reasonably pin the not hoovering thing on them because of their inexplicable terror of the vacuum cleaner but again we all know I find it sort of amusing that they hide above the top cupboards of the fitted kitchen and peep down with only their noses and eyes visible while I do it.My mother has cleaned this apartment much more than I have, in fact she STILL does my washing up when she visits (I have issues with submerging my hands in dirty water). Naturally, it makes me feel like crap when I see her walk in and pull out the cleaning products. The odd thing is though; it doesn’t seem to make her feel like crap. She seems to get some kind of bizarre satisfaction out of it. She cleans things for fun, “Sure I’ll just give this a tidy before Coronation Street comes on – you go in and have a little lie down while I wash up”. I don’t know if she wants to show off her superiority as a homemaker who managed to work for the last 30 years (albeit from home) and keep a well run house practically on her own but she’s certainly doing a good job of it.I feel inferior. Not in my abilities – when I get going I can scrub with the best of them, but more with my lack of energy and enthusiasm. Sometimes on my day off I’ll spend a few hours really cleaning and tidying a room but I know there are four others and by the time I get them done it’ll look like the bottom of a bird cage again. When I get home from work I usually strip, cook whatever convenience food I’ve got handy and then veg out before hitting the bed. I could don the gloves and give the loo a bit of a clean (lord knows it needs it) or even dust one of the beautiful pieces I own but as soon as the thought occurs to me I become an immoveable (m)ass.So I’ve come to the following conclusion: I need a 50s housewife. I’m more than happy to go to work every day to support her and will even go that extra step of buying her flowers and taking her out for dinner once in a while. All I ask for in return is clean laundry, a clean home and, outside of the bedroom, never having to pull on a pair of rubber gloves again.