On cleaning, control, and o.p.s.

First, my doctor has put me on a new form of birth control pills. Their brand name is YAZ. I'm starting to wonder when this name will cease being hilarious to me.

Move out, don't mess around
Move out, you bring me down
Move out, how you get about
don't make a sound just move out
(This picture might prevent pregnancy, actually . . .)

Second, my friend S. and I were chatting about a mutual friend and how people can often assume that theirs is the only pain in the universe. It's astonishing what the cheeriest people go through without batting an eyelash. It's the ones who whinge and whine and tell everyone how they're never going to find love (or something equally banal) who get the attention rather than the woman struggling with abuse or the fellow trying to stop drinking. We were considering whether the cheery-hiding-the-pain might be a southern thing. The Steel Magnolia Syndrome. You've just buried your husband that morning but you're ready to get your next door neighbor a glass of sweet tea 'cause it sure is awful steamy outside these days, sugar, you sit right down.

I'm also reserving the first half of this day for cleaning my house. I am a terrible housekeeper. Things are never dirty, necessarily--no dirty dishes and pizza boxes lying around--but things do get dusty and unspeakably cluttered. My beautiful dining room table is covered end to end with my laptop, my calendars, about a hundred notes to myself, and my morning pill regimen (now with Yaz! I ain't never gonna let you go don't gooooo!)

I loathe cleaning for some reason, but I'm always delighted by the way things look afterwards. I've taken to inviting people to my home in hopes of forcing myself to clean the place out of pure shame. It's working so far, thank heavens. I'm the same way about paying bills, actually. I hate hate hate paying bills because I'm in constant fear of being completely broke. So I avoid paying them. Then when I actually get up the gumption to do it, and it's done, I feel fine.

Suddenly this is turning into the addendum to the weird-things post. Alas. In other news, see Pan's Labyrinth. It's gorgeous. Although this fellow nearly made me wet my pants:

Trust me, it will be ok.