On being dumped: I cleaned my microwave
I’ve been feeling bad about not posting much. Especially since I have a bunch of older content that I’ve been waiting like crazy to share with you all. So I made a promise to myself that I’d sit down and schedule some posts sometime this weekend, as well as write a new one on my thoughts on Mental Health Camp Toronto, an event that happened yesterday that I wasn’t able to attend in person but watched from afar on Twitter. I also plan on doing laundry, taking measurements so I can build my new bed, taking measurements for my bathroom for the lighting installation I’m doing and reorganizing the kitchen. You can bet your booties that I’m going to be blogging about all of these things, but I can’t make any promises about when any of them will get done.
Especially since my eyes are bothering me and I don’t know why.
So here is another older post. I did a search in posts for “dumped” and realized that this would make a great addition to the “On being dumped” series I did. So over the next few days you can hear my story. And today (since re-organizing the kitchen is on the list of things to do) you can hear about how I cleaned my microwave (and the way I’ve cleaned it ever since).
Originally posted: October 28, 2008
I’ve not been posting much. But I’ve been thinking about posting a lot, which I think should count for something.
I’ve been thinking a lot about why I blog. Lots of people thinking blogging is crazy. Lots of people think that the internet is a scary place where I shouldn’t put personal information. Goodness knows, someone might read this in 20 years when I’m Prime Minister and learn about all the crazy things I’ve done. Like: clean my microwave.
I’m too lazy to look up any previous posts I’ve made on the matter, but one of my “things” is the fact that I’m ashamed of a dirty house. There are probably many reasons for this, but the most important reason is that when my house is messy, I am sad. Not because my house is messy, but because the cleanliness of my house is a barometer for my mental health, and dirty means down in the dumps.
Which is why cleaning the microwave warrants a blog post.
My microwave has been dirty for longer than I care to admit. It has smelled like microwave popcorn (sometimes I wonder if I should have just spent money on an air popper, instead of a beautiful LG microwave popcorn machine) and had a little chunk of paper towel stuck to its turney-table-thingy for what seems like forever. But today after heating up my pizza I decided that I was going to use a bit of cleaning knowledge that I’d learned from goodness knows where, and clean it.
So I put a bowl full of water in it, and turned it on for five minutes. I then forgot about it for 20 (I was eating pizza!), but then remembered it again. I turned it on for another five minutes, this time remembering to go and rescue it after it beeped.
Inside, everything was steamy and lovely. And with the assistance of no cleaning product whatsoever, I was able to wipe the inside free of all of the dirt with a paper towel. And it looked gorgeous. And I felt better.
I’m having a particularly hard time at the moment. Money is always a bit of an issue, more so around the time when I have to pay rent and student loans. You would think perhaps I’d change the dates so I didn’t have to pay both at the same time, but that hasn’t as of yet happened. Even though my iPhone brings me immense joy, I worry that I shouldn’t have bought it and instead have paid down the credit card to ensure that I’d have enough room to book a plane ticket home for the holidays. I have to remind myself that the iPhone was purchased with “me” money, and I have to stop spending that on rent or I’m going to go even more bonkers than I already am. And I truly love my iPhone.
It’s also hard because we’re transitioning to the season and the time when I was rather unceremoniously dumped. I’ve not talked about this much, and I’m not sure how much I’m going to talk about it other than to say that though I’d not hoped for a parade, the decency of a goodbye might have at least respected the fact that the relationship had lasted almost seven years. Smells bring back a lot of memories, and right now the cool crisp smell of winter coming reminds me terribly of the weeks I spent curled in a ball wishing for any life but the one I was living.
This will only be magnified by the anniversary date and magnified again by the holiday season. The hardest part is that my love of snow and Christmas and all things magical and wintry has been tainted by the fact that it’s associated with a time in my life I’ve been doing my best to forget.
It’s times like today (even when the first glorious snowflakes are floating down to earth) that I have to celebrate the small victories, no matter how trivial they might seem.
I cleaned my microwave.