Thou Shalt Be Less Gross, Saith the LORD, for Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness. (Except for you, Jessica.)

Many moons ago, when our love was new and my law school days young and her Harvard grad school days only just begun and our apartment much cleaner than it is now, Annie and I discussed our aspirations for the coming school year.

"I," quoth Annie, "am going to pull another Rushmore-esque turn. Seriously. I'm running for everything while I'm here. I'm taking Cambridge by storm."

"Mrmph," said I. My mouth was full of bacon and peanut buttery goodness. (Oh, shush. Elvis loved a peanut-butter-and-bacon sandwich just as much as he loved overdosing on drugs, and you know it.)

"And then? I really want to check out this negotiations class that the Law School offers in the spring. Oh, but that might not leave me enough time for that extra stats class I want to take...now why did you say you're going to law school? Any big goals?"

"Mrmph," said I, and cleared my throat. "Yes. Actually." I took a deep breath. "I'd like to be less gross -- not that law school teaches you how to do that, but I figure if I'll be traipsing about in skirts and pantyhose and suits aplenty, I might as well learn how to not get toothpaste on my shirt in the morning, or how to stop my right armpit from sweating at the speed of light, or maybe how to brush my hair."

Annie, startled, looked at my hair. "Are you...sure you're ready for that?"

And I thought I was. I really did. I mean, I bought a brush and some detergent and everything! I even thought (briefly) about actually paying someone to cut my hair and decided against it. Why, Seth B. told me in civil procedure that it looked like I took at least five minutes to get up and out of the door in the mornings -- a clear improvement on the three minutes I'd been averaging when I was working twelve hours a day for ERN and four for Saint Joe's and not getting to sleep before two most mornings because my Favorite Overseas Partner in Crime couldn't work up the man-boobs to pick up the phone, and so all of our arguments about, I don't know, feminism and the genus of muskrats and the odds of Penn State EVER beating Boston College in ANYTHING took four times as long since we had to tippity tap away at the keyboard, and gosh, don't you just love it when I insert personal jokes here that no one else could remotely find funny?

WELL. Can you say relapse? I thought I was doing well. Granted, I've tried to style myself as having a very "devil may care" approach to fashion, working off of the model I cut in college when my mother would regularly make these comments: "Are you a lesbian?" and "You look like you walked through a fabric store with a bad case of static cling. Is that a -- are those --is that a pair of jeans on your head?! Jessica, we're going to church!!" (The answers, respectively, were no and yes, yes it is. Man, I wish I had a picture of that.)

Anyway, now that I'm clean (hah! Christian humor), and now that 22 is behind me (horrid, sickly, insipid little year), I've put some things behind me: jazz guitarists, for one. Classical bassists, for another. Smoking and swearing like a sailor went out the window with my habit of secretly loving to peel Elmer's glue off of my skin and look for split ends to, well, split. I'd almost completely kicked my spoonful-of-peanut-butter snack habit, and things were looking good on the pumice-stone-on-your-heels-at-least-once-a-week front. It's also been awhile since someone's spit toothpaste on me (Bryan) or rubbed my head in their post-workout armpit (Patrick) or stuck a wet finger in my ear (Bryan and Patrick) or passed gas in my presence (Derek, Patrick, DAN...Uncle Charlie!!!). In other words, it's been awhile since I've been around dudes for any prolonged length of time, and I can honestly say that I now clean my bathroom and lighting fixtures at least once every week. I also sweep under my bed. And I never pick my nose. That's maturity, right? That's some serious cleanliness right there. I truly thought I and my little cleanliness wagon had arrived.

So you can imagine my chagrin today when, after lusting for an eggplant parmigianno grilled cheese with melted mozzarella and plum tomatoes all through property, I dropped the eggplant, melty mozzarella side down, on the throw rug in our kitchen that hasn't been washed since I last washed it. In October. And friends, I'd like to say that whole years of spiritual growth and firm resolve made me do the right thing -- made me pick up the whole conglomerated mess, throw it in the garbage, and start again -- I'd like to say that. I'd like to have accomplished at least one of my objectives here, the only one that was ever realistically within my grasp. But the cheese was so melty and the eggplant so garlicky and the sandwich....so....tantalizing....

I picked that sucker up, checked for hairs and found none -- and ate it all with a glass of milk.

What'd you do today?