I scrubbed my kitchen counters today for the first time in months. And I mean, scrubbed. I always clean up after meals and wipe around my utensil jar and shit when it gets messy, but I have not removed everything from the counter, dusted and scrubbed those objects, and then scrubbed in the cracks for eons.

I cleaned up my window sill, which was dusty and covered in litter from my shamrock and the bugs that my kitchen spider is kind enough to kill for me. In a couple of weeks when the vinegar flies are completely gone, I imagine I’ll be cleaning up her, too. I got up all the faint wine and tomato sauce rings that soak into the crappy Formica and the metal streaks from opening cans on the counter that only Comet seems to remove. I like the cold season sometimes because I can rest assured knowing that I won’t find a fly in my salt pig, at least.

It was long overdue. Regular readers probably know that my kitchen gets some heavy-ass use, and this would probably be a food blog if those were invented in 2001. *waves cane*

I was thinking today as I scrubbed of all the hours I have spent cleaning rental houses, and all the rentals I have spent cleaning in my life. It’s kind of a bummer but not disconcerting to me to see the edges crumbling like it was in the brief period I was an owner. And this house is crumbling. The people who built the townhouses across the street helpfully told me that it’s leaning. I know. I know that every time I spill something and it rolls into the corner. They built the driveway next to the foundation. Interestingly, the neighbor’s unit leans even more than ours. Sometimes I lay in bed and worry that at two a.m. someday I will hear a horrible cracking noise and this duplex will become an in-twoplex.

I used to think that I had to own a house to raise children in or I was doing it wrong, but I realized today I have let that notion go. It’s okay that I gave birth in a rental in Shoreline, and that I almost had my second daughter in a nasty apartment on Aurora. The children are still here. It’s not about the place.

Also I am thinking of when I houseshared with my mother in my early twenties and I cleaned the kitchen on a regular basis, scrubbing corners and cracks and getting grease off her canisters. One day she asked me a question out of exasperation that made me think of the old ad with the kid who’s doing drugs and his dad says how did you learn to do this? It haunted my Saturday mornings. That dad was a DRUGGIE. Then I found out that everyone’s parents were doing drugs.

She asked me, “Why do you clean like this? It’s obsessive.”

“One of the guys taught me how to do this,” I said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“But–”

“Who taught you how to clean like this?”

“I learned it from watching YOU, okay? I learned it from WATCHING YOU.”