Tuesday, July 01, 2008

and i feel fine

mopless mopping

I find myself tangled in cords in the middle of the night most nights, the price of falling asleep listening to my ipod. Recently, I got a little clamp lamp for the side of my bed, so I've resumed reading before bed sometimes. But I dislike waking up hours later with the light still on, my glasses crooked and shoved into the side of my head, the book fallen over, pages bent. So I listen.

The other night I fell asleep to the most recent To The Best Of Our Knowledge podcast, about It's The End Of The World As We Know It. And while I find all of the TTBOOK episodes compelling and interesting -so much so that I'm always thinking, oh! I should write in my little blog about that. But I never do- this one stuck especially in my head. I probably shouldn't have fallen asleep to the episode about peak oil and apocalypse, because I had a sleepless night plagued with nightmares. Overactive imagination or warning! warning! warning! ? It's hard to know. It's hard to know what is prudent preparation and what might not matter anyway. I don't think any of us wish to be caught the shivering grasshopper. But if the ants don't last much longer. . . ?

In the grand scheme of a world without oil, the hierarchy of importance shifts. Suddenly we're embracing tiny moments and whittling down our fluffy existence to the stuff that really counts. Suddenly things that raise my blood pressure now and have me wondering if it's beer o'clock yet -like my blasted nasty kitchen floor- seem so obscenely trivial.

I'm not anxious to start living a post-apocalyptic life early, but I am trying to not let the trivial stuff get the better of me. Because it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if my floors are spotty, if my sink is pitted and ever rusty, if my windows open the wrong direction (it pains me a little, ridiculously so, that I have side-to-side opening windows and not up-and-down opening windows). None of these irritants will survive in the face of global tragedy, so I might as well start letting them fade away now.

I've thrown the mop out all together. Every couple of days or so, I dump some water (with white vinegar and essential oil drops) on to the floor, throw an old dirty towel over the puddle, and scooch around. It's easier than mopping and the weight of me pressing into the rough surface of the floor pulls ground-in dirt out of all the little crevices. It is quick and cheap. To think a few weeks ago I almost bought an expensive steam cleaner, I was so frustrated! With all the dollars I saved on that, I can add more food storage to my End of the World stock. (ha ha, kidding. but not really).

2 comments:

Lisa said...

I am worried and stocking up. I'm not going to go all Y2K or anything, but I'm stocking up on staples like beans and rice. I figure even if we don't have catastrophe, food prices are certainly going up, so why not buy right now.

textile_fetish said...

I have no mop, only a mop handle. I throw down a damp towel and shoe it around. The reason why is that the store-bought sponge-head lasted for about three uses. Dammit.

Eat More Kale!