My mother is driving into the city for something or other today, which means she's stopping by to drop off my birthday gift this afternoon. The birthday gift is three months late, but I don't care. That seems to have become more or less of a tradition, but I can appreciate procrastination. I guess it runs in the family.

As long as she was stopping by, I got her to do a few errands for me, so now I don't have to drive into the suburbs tomorrow. Let's hear it for laziness. I don't feel bad making her pick up Oreo's medicine, after so many times calling me up on a Friday night and asking me to water her plants so they can go to Michigan for the weekend, back when I lived five minutes away. It's only fair. I think.

Anyway, the point of the story is, well, there is no point. But what I've been getting at is my mom's visit has prompted an emergency cleaning session of my apartment. Dust here, sweep there, good grief, I'm a slob. My attitude seems to be, why bother cleaning? It'll just get dirty again in a couple of days. The dust doesn't stop falling. The dog continues to shed. It's an endless cycle. The toilet is the only thing I clean regularly because well, I have to touch that with bare skin. The only other time I clean anything else seems to be when I expect company, which is actually kind of rare. This is my Fortress of Solitude, after all. And if it's a dusty fortress, well that's my choice. You don't have to visit. Though if you do, I'll probably clean it in a panicked frenzy beforehand.

So what's my gift? A vacuum cleaner.

listening to: Beatles. After ripping all of my beatles cds, I notice my mp3 collection is now almost 10% Beatles songs. That's almost 1 day's worth of the Fab Four. I don't even think they made that many songs.
in my sink: The top to my coffee maker.