Cleaning Up
During my adult life (meaning post-college), a span of forty-four years, I have not lived alone for very long. I am what they call a serial monogamist. I don’t understand people who enjoy playing the field. I can only handle one relationship at a time, but I have a strong need to be in a primary relationship. I am on my third and last marriage. I can be so certain about that because in whatever circumstance I would find myself without Kim, I would not seek another relationship. That’s probably a blend of two reasons; first is that I’m too old to do this again and second, I could never find anyone as perfect for me as Kim. So, I just hope Kim stays safe and tolerant of me. I’ve been put out on the stoop with the cat twice.
That means I have spent most of my adult life living with my significant others. The notable times between marriages add to a half dozen of the forty-four years (call it 15% of my adult life). I had a rented one-bedroom in Battery Park City, a big CEO ex-pat apartment in Toronto, a two-bedroom on 29th Street and a loft on 22nd Street. In each one I had a cleaning lady that came once a week and cleaned and did laundry. They all said the same thing, they had too little to clean up after. I simply don’t tend to mess things up much. More accurately, if I do use something, I tend to clean up after myself such that there’s only a small clean-up.
When Kim first met me, she looked in my refrigerator, which at the time was a glass-door Sub-Zero. What she saw was neatly arrayed soft drinks and a few basic staples, but a refrigerator with nothing much in it and neat as a pin. Rather than this being a positive, it was a point of confusion to Kim, because she somehow wondered if a person with OCD was lurking deep in my soul. I guess women distrust men who are either too messy or two neat.
I find it interesting that whatever woman I have been with, they don’t think I will know what to do when left to myself. Kim is convinced that my being in New York at our apartment without her for three weeks will be unmanageable for me. I make no secret of the fact that I don’t like being alone. But that doesn’t mean I can’t manage. I’ve been apart from Kim for as much as two months when she went West, and I stayed East. We have it reasonably well worked-out. Kim orders food or meds for me and we have the cleaning lady. I would say I can survive easily in a place like Manhattan, especially with all the online services that deliver briskly. All entertainment is on demand on Fios, Netflix and Prime. GrubHub and Seemless bring meals. Fresh Direct brings other food and supplies. Cameo Cleaners brings me freshly laundered clothes. And, as we have all learned in the past few years, Amazon can deliver anything else I need within a day.
When I have been away from New York I have found I am equally able to manage for myself. When I am on vacation in a rented villa or some such spot, I tend to get up early and explore. I go find local shops and shockingly, I manage to buy things I want or need and feed and clean-up after myself quite easily. The same is true in my new San Diego hilltop lair. I make my own breakfast, bus my dishes, manage a lunch either in or out (Kim is much more bound by Cecil when we are in San Diego) and can even find a dinner for myself when needed. But here’s the big thing…the house stays more or less clean and neat when its just me using it.
This doesn’t mean Kim is not clean, in fact my basic image of Kim is that she is always cleaning up in the kitchen. But there is the rub. She cooks, I don’t. Cooking is a big culprit in the whole keeping the house clean program. But even in the rest of the house, I only use a small part of the house. When I am in NYC I use my bed, my bathroom, my den and my couch. In San Diego I use my bed, my bathroom, my den and my couch. Outside I use my hot tub and my deck chair. I am apparently a light touch user of my residence. This comports to my office experience at Cornell when I was teaching. I was a highly desirable office-sitter for people on sabbatical since I never used much of the office or messed up people’s stuff.
I suspect this is a natural characteristic for me. I see it with my youngest son as well. He makes his bed every day and his room is always neat. When our nephew and his fiancé recently came to stay with us, after a day their room looked like a bomb went off in it. Some people just use their space intensely where others leave no fingerprints. It turns out I am more the latter than the former, which is a little unexpected since I am such a big guy. I guess this is somewhat about being neat versus messy, which we know to be a basic characteristic of different people. But I also think there is something about how much you need to “use” your space. Some people wallow in their space, I tend to perch on top of it and tidy up as I leave.
I only leave my NYC apartment to go to the office so that I have a change of scenery, since I could do my job easily from my desktop (hence my belief that I can do my job from San Diego). That’s all of 200 feet away from my front door. So, unless I am willing to go full hermit, I have to schedule things to do and people to see. My usual array of go-to activities is dominated by movies, but with 60+ of the latest movies sent to Kim as screeners, I really have seen everything there is to see. I have no idea when that cycle will turn, but not likely while I’m here in NYC for the next few weeks. That is all my way of saying that I have no one coming over to my apartment except the cleaning lady. That means that this apartment for three weeks is on 15% utilization. I just ran the dishwasher last night after four days home. It was about 10% full at most, but I felt that things might start to smell if I waited longer to run it. I will have the same decision soon about the garbage.
The cleaning lady comes twice more before Kim comes. That’s two easy days for her. I like her so that’s fine. Once Kim gets here, I expect to reap the whirlwind as they say, not just because she will be orchestrating our move, but because she does not subscribe to the light touch apartment living philosophy. She has two performances to do while in town and I expect her to be all over the place between that and the move. I guess that makes these two weeks the calm before the storm.