Weekend Visitors

So.  Another K was here this past weekend.  Two actually.  The main one in charge being Switch Kellie, who was with us, as far as my investigation is telling me, beginning Sunday around 1:00 pm.  She was with us for pretty much the whole day and night, except at one point in the early morning hours she receded and The Cleaner came out and took over her chores. The Cleaner was only doing what Switch Kellie had written down on her list.  Switch Kellie always has a list, or I guess I should say lists, as there are so many of them.  Lists of all sorts of things....things to do, places to go, people to call, emails to send, groceries to buy, books to read, I could go on and on.  But on the list were a number of cleaning tasks, and so The Cleaner came out and took over and cleaned everything.  She's quite obsessive about her chores.  If only she showed up everyday, my house would be immaculate!  But unfortunately, that's not the way it works. After she'd cleaned, she went back inside and Switch Kellie was here to finish up some tasks, including writing a journal entry. Both The Cleaner and Switch Kellie wrote in our journal Sunday/Monday.  I'm eager to show it to my psychiatrist tomorrow at my appointment. 

 She met The Cleaner once but I don't think she knew who it was, as she never identified herself; she just went off on a rant about dirt and how it was all around her and how we were so afraid of dirt and dust.  Anyway, The Cleaner came and cleaned Sunday night and early Monday morning then wrote a journal entry and was gone by 7:00 Monday morning.  So Switch Kellie was in control again and there was more list-making (as always) and she paid the bills and went to the bank and tended to some financial matters. She was trying to get as much accomplished as possible before she left. Unfortunately, she didn't get finished before she left (sometime yesterday evening), and now here I am, with all her notes and lists and plans, and I just don't know if I can do all of this. I took a nap yesterday evening, and when I woke up, it was "me" again and I had a million things to do.  Things needing doing include taking Mom out of town to see a pain management specialist, picking up a prescription at Mom's doctor's office, taking Mom to yet another doctor at 2:30 this afternoon, returning some library books, and going by the medical supply store to get Mom a 25 foot oxygen line.  Is that a lot?  I just don't know.  But I guess I better get started, i.e. get dressed.  It's good to be back in my body but I wish that Switch Kellie had gotten more done while she was here.  She's so good at managing things, whereas I have no sense of time and no way to prioritize. All I know to do is follow her list and hope that I get these things accomplished.  Tomorrow we get to see our psychiatrist.  I'm going to tell her that I'm too stressed out, for stress is the main reason Switch Kellie comes out, she takes over when I'm unable to handle all the pressure.  She takes care of us when I can't take care of myself.  If I get overwhelmed, she shows up (ideally).  So I know that the stress level is high around here, just based on her presence.  Man, I really could use her today... If only I knew how to force out a specific me. That would be so awesome. I'd be Switch Kellie and run errands out in public, then I'd change to The Cleaner and do all the housework, and then I would change into one of the K's who is fun to be around and good for socializing.  In a perfect world, the right K would appear at the right time and everything would just flow naturally from one moment to the next.  Sigh.  If only...

The Cleaner

JOURNAL ENTRY-SUNDAY, APRIL 15, 2012  (Late night/early Monday morning)
MUST. CLEAN. EVERYTHING. I don't have time to write, there are things to do, things to clean, things to organize. I have dusted every nook and cranny in this room and the adjoining room and cleaned all the mirrors and glass in the house and swept floors and cleaned counters and put dishes away and scrubbed the shower and cleaned the sinks and sanitized the toilet and scrubbed the baseboards and cleaned the ceiling fan and organized a stack of bills and papers on the dresser. All of those things sound really lame, but if you knew how quickly I was getting each task done, you'd be impressed. I've not stopped, except for now, this moment, wherein I'm telling my story. I cleaned everything in the bathroom. I got a laundry basket and loaded it up with various types of cleansers and dust rags and sponges and a broom and dustpan and a Swiffer duster...you get the idea.  I lugged this basket of cleaning supplies around from room to room. I cleaned the kitchen while I was waiting on the coffee to brew. The other K, the one who was here earlier, she drinks tea. Switch Kellie she's called. She wrote a journal entry too.  We are having trouble deciding if we should share all this with the public. Do they really need to know that one of the K's is known as The Cleaner and is OCD about cleanliness and organization?

 
Well, there you have it. I'm always cleaning when I am in charge.  I have an actual fear of dirt. I wear rubber gloves up to my elbows (they're actually lime green with a Pucci-style print on the cuffs; they're called "Glam Gloves") I'm terrified of the cobwebs which I sometimes find in the corner of a spare room. If I get in the shower, the tiles over my head seem to try and swallow me up and drip germs on me and I look around and I'm just surrounded by dirt, dirty tiles, mildew, black gook, rust stains, red streaks where hair dye got on the shower wall, stained grout that is no longer white...oooooh Shivers just ran up my spine! I can't think about the dirt anymore.  It's freaking me out. Besides, I cleaned all that stuff, so there's no dirt now, and obviously I was exaggerating about how dirty the shower was to begin with. Everything has been cleaned and sanitized.  In pretty much every room, except for Husband's rooms of course.  I'm afraid to dust in there; what if I accidentally broke something?  So I've cleaned the kitchen, the bedroom, 2 bathrooms, the den, the dining room, the living room, the laundry room...I organized drawers and shelves...I thought about alphabetizing all the CD's, but that seemed like a task larger than I felt I had time to accomplish.  Some day, I will do that task.  I promise you.  So I, The Cleaner, for a while have been sharing co-consciousness with a different K.  The Good Daughter appeared occasionally when we went into our mother's room, but for most of the weekend, Switch Kellie was here.  She made the big list of things to do, and cleaning was on the list.  And so I came and took over and saw to it that everything got cleaned properly.  I can't vacuum because Mom is asleep, but I'll do it later. Also, still need to mop the kitchen. And I wonder if the windows need washing...What else can I clean? I don't see any point in going to bed now. Might as well keep cleaning. Let's get serious-I'm thinking about polishing silver... And have I ever mentioned that I wash the bar of soap  in the soap dish? It's true. Is that weird? I mean, it's soap. It should be self-cleaning.