A history of my life in dust buffaloes

Some people have dust bunnies, those little bits of fluff that bear witness to a moment of inattention in the great housekeeping sweepstakes.

Once in a while we have dust bunnies. Most of the time we have dust buffaloes. They bear witness to weeks of inattention, what some people here prefer to think of as focusing on other things. Well, yes.

The day arrived - it was yesterday - when in a panic I announced that the house really had to be cleaned. Now, immediately, all of it. Well, maybe just the most conspicuous parts of it. Even I could see that all of it was more than a day's work. I used to have a cleaning woman. At that point my business was slightly different and I had clients visiting and people to whom I outsourced work would come to the office. I simplified my work, downsized, and decided I could do without the cleaning woman, since I seemed to spend 1/2 day a week tiptoeing around her. The family assured me this was fine, that we would all chip in to clean regularly. If anyone had the option of sleeping in on the day the cleaning woman came, or if anyone was sick, this would no longer be a problem. We could probably go out to a nice restaurant sometimes on the money we saved.

Frankly, it didn't work. That was 7 months ago and the house has - well, you don't want to know when it was last cleaned, do you? As for the restaurant meals, they degenerated into hurried pizzas at home when we didn't have time for real meals.

Now here was my logic yesterday: the accountant was coming to close the 2005 books for my company and prepare the tax return with me. The office is part of our living space, much of which is an open area, so I would somehow have to get him in the door, past two bedrooms and several spaces that include corners for cooking, eating and all those other untidy things we do during a typical day. He, being a man of numbers, probably has a tidy mind and he would be shocked to see such unkempt quarters. I, being disturbed to see him shocked, would probably have trouble following his arguments about closing the accounts and making decisions about whether I am poor or rich this year, for these are not realities, they are accounting decisions, in my experience.

We chased buffalo most of the day. I coughed and had to scrub off the grime several times, but I convinced the cleaning gang (those who helped create the grime in the first place) that the time had come to throw out Old Stuff. My son is leaving home and we agreed that it makes no sense to keep books for 8 year-old boys or board games for rainy days with visiting grannies. Yes, they were called bored games, for days when he was really bored.

By the time the accountant came, early in the morning, I had seen much of my life from the past two decades gallop before me and away, on the backs of the dust buffaloes. Gone now are the bits of old jewelry saved for a short-lived post-summer camp beading frenzy. Gone are the mysterious medicines and heat rubs for injuries and ailments from the summer of '94, the Indian spices from a curry binge in 1996. Brochures about visiting penguins at the South Pole, and riding a motorcyle across Lapland in Finland to see the autumn colors: I remembered the year I fancied those trips but had to settle for staying at home when a magazine I worked for went broke and didn't pay me.

I can't say it was fun, but the air did seem a little better at the end of the day. I doubt the accountant noticed anything other than a strong blend of furniture polish and floor cleaner, still lingering in the air.

Buffalo-free, I was able to concentrate and follow him, more or less, when he said I would either pay taxes or get a reimbursement. That's what I love about accounting: it is such a black and white, tidy business.