Convalescent Note:
Dying to Dust
22 February 2019
¶ When I decided to stop Drink two months ago (two months and a day, to be exact), I surmised that there would be some tough times ahead, and there have been, but they haven’t had anything to do with craving alcohol. What’s killing me is feeling the apartment get dustier and dustier. I can smell it.
There is no way, unfortunately, to reconcile dusting with staying off my feet. I suppose I could sashay around with a feather duster, but that’s not my way. When I dust and polish a table, I take everything off of it, and then wipe everything with a damp cloth before putting it back. By my calculations, there are seven dustable surfaces in the bedroom, five in the foyer, five in the main sitting area, five in what I call the boudoir, beneath the living-room window, and three in the dining ell. It takes a little more than two hours make the rounds on a Saturday afternoon, as I’ve done for decades; make it two-and-a-half with the vacuuming.
It’s not that I haven’t done any dusting since the infection set in, two months ago. It’s that I haven’t dared to do any in the past two weeks, since the podiatrist threatened me with amputations. As a result of taking his threats seriously, my right foot is only very slightly swollen now — really. The more I stay off my foot, the sooner I’ll be able to dust, I get that.
But waiting to be All Better is Killing Me. You could write your name or the date in my impatience.