Next to Godliness.

Dear mess in the guest room,

In the immortal words of the Dalek,

"Exterminate!"

love,

your owner (of the mess and the room)

This was pretty much my day today. Clean, clean, clean. I'm not sure what possessed me, but the boxes in the guest room were calling my name and demanding they be unpacked. Have they been calling my name since they were first put there a year and a half ago? Most likely. But, like the boxes in the garage, I am deliberately oblivious to their calls. I hate unpacking. I hate packing, too. (Good thing I married a man whose job allows us to settle down and grow roots and get comfortable in a place for a long ti...Oh. Right.) I am agonizingly slooow when it comes to packing for anything, even if it's a vacation I'm excited about taking. The thought of going through all of my clothes and narrowing then down to 3, 6, 10 days worth is painful. Which is why I always overpack and then get chastised by the person who has to lug my suitcase around, aka my husband. (Don't even ask him about Venice. Venice almost broke that Marine.) So I unpacked four boxes and got it down to two, one small one big. The small one only still exists because, even though I would like to, I can't throw away that which is not mine. I also vacuumed, scrubbed countertops, Magic Erasered the sink and bathtubs, wiped down the microwave, and even took off those grates covering the gas stovetop and soaked them in hot water. I guess when the mood strikes...strike back!