Silver Lining

That's a nice phrase, silver lining.  Except, of course, when you're instructed to go hunting for it under the cloaks of suckiness swathing your life.

Nevertheless, I've informed myself, sternly, that I will seek out the shiny stuff and huff it until I'm silver in the face!  Or something.  To wit: here are the good things about sinking your life savings into a house containing a raging and seemingly ineradicable (we are one month and three exterminator visits in) flea infestation:

1) No house I've ever lived in has been this clean.  Seriously.  There is no dust.  Anywhere.  My dust allergy has gone into remission.  I go to bed every night on freshly laundered sheets.   No crumbs between the couch cushions, no spiderwebs, no gunk on the floor.   I'd eat off that floor.  Except that, you know, it's been doused in insecticide.

2) I can eat anything I want!  When I remember to eat!  So far, I've consumed an entire jar of JIF creamy peanut butter, forty-seven lattes, toast, and a whole lot of ice cream.  All of this due to a bracing new fitness regimen comprising 60-90 minutes of daily vacuuming, followed by several hours of standing and staring at my feet.  Vacuuming is hard.  It is no wonder our grandmothers were thinner than we are.

3) I'm getting out of the house.  A lot.  This is probably the silveriest of the silver linings.  I'm an inveterate homebody, and it's frequently been difficult to pry me away from my books and my tea and my comforts of home to face the wider world.  Not so now!  Since the battle was joined, I've been seized with irresistible urges to go on walks, frequent coffee shops, go out to eat, help other people move house.   I've toured the botanic gardens, the art museum, Colonial Williamsburg, the beach, historic churches, the club district, the capital, the moon....  Okay, not the moon.  But I've been out and about.  Which is a big change, for me.   I'm not really getting any work done, but I've seen some very pretty flowers.

4)  If this ever, ever, ever ends, I will be pretty damn happy.  And I will make myself a very, very, very large, very very silvery gin and tonic.  Here's hoping.