Beautiful sunshiny afternoon - finally, after so much rain. I have spent the day housecleaning in advance of our houseguests. The job is bigger than I expected. Played Cinderella, on my hands and knees washing the kitchen floor for the first time in umpteen ever. Me, variation on the theme. Housecleaning isn't very conducive to creative writing though. I resented it, and then felt stupid that for all my education and work experience I'm complaining to myself about an excess of housework. I burst into tears, but then at other points had to laugh. No, I'm not crazy. I do have issues, though. One is having fallen for the umpteenth bs time for the self-mythologist's B.S. I'm a sucker for the word "love" which he threw around. But "love" meant something different to him than it does to me - than it, I'd venture to say, commonly means. I'm not a madonna, not a whore... I picked up a book from the library, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth, by Nina Auerbach. I started paging through it yesterday. I know I'm not doing the book justice at all. It seemed to be about a certain archetype of woman who's a force, full of life, and thus mystery, danger, and vitality (who - me?). I don't know if I have this right. I don't understand it, not really, plus I'm too close to it. But I wonder if former paramour finds me a bit Too Much. Not to be cliched - but that he's scared of women. They have to be compartmentalized, in Little Boxes (yeah, I know). So he has his dutiful mother/wife who keeps the home fires burning, then he's got whatever else he has going on on the side - a revolving door over the years, I gather - don't get too close! -- and then there's me (but maybe not just me) whom he no, not - in his word - loved. Well, maybe - loved & feared. Too much. It's like being on the downlow when you're straight. You want the picture perfect proprietous life, the zipless f**ks whenever you like - and I, or some ideation of me fit in - how? where? Well, it wasn't love, anyway.

Love would have met me for coffee.

Listen darlings, I'm exhausted, so I'm going to let this admittedly sloppy, unfinished, slapdash piece go. I still have a ton of vacuuming to do. XOXOXO, all.