Almost 10 p.m. for this Night Owl Gal in blog posting #1.
I'm sitting at home, listening to my washing machine spin and nursing last nights hangover this evening, trying out a night of self-imposed house arrest to force me to clean the loft. I live in a building that was once a factory, with beautiful brick walls and giant beams and hardwood floors, just north of Boston in a bedroom community that is at once dangerous and "hip". Our building is comprised almost completely of gay couples and hip singles, with "us" being one of only 3 straight couples in the building. Everyone is constantly popping in and out, a little like Melrose place, stopping by for cocktails and gathering information to make snarky comments about to each other later. Who got new blinds, who can't keep their loft looking stellar, who shops (god forbid) at Ikea. Cheap cheap cheap. Me, I'm a Target kind of gal and have been trying to ignore the (I'm sure) well-meant and pointed comments in my presence lately about how great people's cleaning ladies are. I don't need a cleaning lady, I live in one big room for the sake of all that is holy. I should be able to keep one big room clean!

It is so dissappointing to hear yourself lying.

The guy makes it somewhat harder, loving to collect receipts and scraps of paper with unimportant things written on them. The clutter drives me insane, and I will gather his lovingly-collected and maintained mountains of tiny pieces of paper and place them in the kitchen on the island for a week before I begin throwing them away. I see no point in keeping receipts from Starbucks, and the MBTA. He twitches when I throw them away, and hours later I often find him standing above the garbage can, reviewing what I've disposed of and wondering if I will catch him if he digs them out. I don't know what it is about the scraps of paper that he loves. I guess it's a man thing.