2024 Week 27.5: Deep Cleaning

The whirlwind 3 months of my internship are over, my post-internship trip is done, most of the bunnies have gone home, and now the dust is settling. Achoo. 

Reader, I spent yesterday and today changing the bedlinen (there is a lot to change; we have 2 beds, 2 duvets, 2 bolsters and 5 pillows between us) and deep cleaning my (the bunny boarding) room. I've been dying to reorganise my room for a long time because I had stupidly placed my bookshelves (Muji pulpboard shelves) under the aircon, meaning I had to move them away anytime I need to clean the aircon. I've moved them to the far side of the room. Time for a shelfie, I think:

I am not sure these shelves can survive the onslaught of Haybeon. She moves back here tomorrow and will live in this enclosure (1/3 of the room cordoned off). On that note I also reduced the number of bunny enclosures in my room to 3. That way I can maintain a minimum size of 90cm x 180cm per playpen, and the maximum number of bunnies (or bonded pairs) we can take in will now be 4 (3 in my room, 1 in Jon's). 

I enjoy being back home and doing domestic things. Like doing the laundry, vacuuming rugs, restocking groceries and pet supplies, looking for ever-more-powerful wet wipes to try and de-mold the fridge... 

My mum was retrenched in the 2009 financial crisis and has been pretty much either semi- or fully-retired since then. Back then, I asked my mum whether she thought it's a shame that she went to university and had a high-flying career, only to be "reduced" to cooking and washing dishes in her 50s. Not at all, she said. Housework is of infinitely higher value than work.

I didn't understand that then, but now it resonates. Per Samuel Johnson:

The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours [spent at home] which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

Currently in a very pleasant state of mind. How can I describe it? At last I have stopped fighting the current of time. Now I'm allowing myself to glide into a new stage of life. I guess I'm leaning into middle age lol.

There's a huge benefit to being an Older Woman, which is that the rules of dating/attraction no longer apply. That's pretty liberating. I can travel alone, go to social events, flirt outrageously, dress however I like, etc. without being concerned about attracting people or putting them off. Being middle-aged renders you invisible to probably 70% of the male population, which is, hand on heart, a wonderful thing. 

I've been thinking a lot about this passage from Tolstoy's War and Peace:

'Why do I struggle? Why am I toiling and moiling in this narrow, petty environment, when life, all life with its every joy, lies open before me?' he said to himself. And for the first time for a very long while he began making happy plans for the future. [...] 'I must make the most of my freedom while I feel myself so overflowing with strength and energy,' he said to himself. 'Pierre was right when he said one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy,' he thought.

Pretty soon I will be buying myself something I've longed for for years - a yoga membership. Couldn't justify it since I wasn't working full-time. I tried doing yoga at home, free ClassPass trials, free HPB classes, and then tried substituting with cheaper forms of fitness like running, lifting weights etc. I even considered YTT because the monetisation aspect made it more palatable to my inner Scrooge.

Long story short, none of them worked; I am still the kind of person who wants to go to a yoga studio every day and I just have to accept that!

In health-related news I am now on a "low-carb diet". I still eat rice/noodles/bread/sugar but quite a lot less than before. I had tried but failed keto before so this time I am doing it very gently. So far, it's surprisingly enjoyable. These days a tablespoon of rice can satisfy me when previously I had to eat an entire bowl. I'm hoping not just to lose weight, but also become less irritable as a result of blood sugar fluctuations.

A typical low-carb lunch:

2 pictures you didn't ask for: