6:45am:

Today is a cleaning day. It MUST be a cleaning day. Last Tuesday was supposed to be cleaning day and it turned out, it wasn’t. This weekend there were supposed to be several cleaning hours and as it turned out, there weren’t. Today must be a cleaning day. If I say this to myself enough times, it might actually happen.

I don’t even hate cleaning. I kind of like it – once I get started. I get this weird – “Oh! And I should clean this too! And this! And look I can do that!” Before I know it, the house is spotless.

It’s the before I start part that’s hard to overcome. There’s so many other things I’d rather be doing before I start. And so many reasons to do just one more thing first until the day is done and I still have not mopped the floor.

Sweeping the floor and doing dishes aren’t cleaning day things. Those happen multiple times every day and don’t trigger my can’t-stop cleaning mode. They’re something else entirely I guess.

12:15pm:

Good news. The house is clean. My littlest son is still in his pajamas, but the house is cleaned up. Did it.

Now, after making sure everyone in the house is dressed and feeling apropriately snuggled as per the latest request, I’m thinking about rereading that book I read yesterday. I’m a little embarrassed to tell you what it is – but I will.

It’s the 10th anniversary edition of Twilight – called Life and Death – where the author reverses the genders of the characters. Twilight caught a lot of flack for being such a damsel in distress story, and her response was “Actually, it’s a human in distress story”. She tried to prove it with this new version where Edward is Edythe and Bella is Beau. But you know what? It doesn’t work.

I consider myself fairly with it when it comes to gender roles and not abiding by a strictly traditional interpretation…but this reversed story just.did.not.work. It was kind of horrible. I didn’t believe any of it. So I’m going to reread it. I’m not sure why it didn’t work and that makes me curious. Especially when the original worked so well for me. What is it about this role reversal that I can’t believe exactly?

Have any of you read it? Did you dislike it as much as I did? Why?