After being out of town and just plain out of commission, today found me both home and feeling over my cold enough to catch up with my beloved Lily.

I made a decision awhile ago to stop multitasking during real phone conversations, since it's not possible for me to have a quality talk with split focus. But I find I get mad spilkes when I have to sit and focus with no visual stimulus or physical activity. I'm okay if I'm hanging out with a friend and we're 'just' talking, I'm okay driving a car and listening to the radio, but I cannot JUST sit and talk on the phone or JUST sit and listen to music. (Oddly, I can just sit and watch a movie or even TV, but I feel sick if I JUST watch TV. That might be JUST conditioning, though, Ole Golly and my mom felt pretty much the same way about the idiot box.)

Anyway, I'd been Getting To Empty in preparation for my trip tomorrow, but that required mental energy, which I wanted to have fully focused on Lily. I stopped as soon as I got on the phone, but sitting still was starting to make me panicky. Not good.

Then, while I was up getting a drink of water, I absentmindedly picked up a sponge and started cleaning the window screen in the kitchen. Instantly, I felt my focus return, laser-like, to our conversation. So I got out the all-purpose cleaner and wiped down the vertical blinds. And then the glass cleaner and cleaned all the slats so they could go back into the jalousie windows for fall.

And lo, an hour and a half later, not only were Lily and I massively caught up on events large and small over the past month, my whole apartment looked amazing.

Everybody wins.

Despite my highly competitive nature, that really is my favorite thing...

xxx c

Photo by webschepper via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.