I vacuum once/week. I live alone but do have a cat. I dust probably once/month.

I clean almost everything in my house with baking soda, vinegar

This is me.

What I like best is that the vinegar leaves no residue, unlike nearly all commercial cleaning products.

Plus, I make my own softscrub, which works wonderfully and smells fabulous because I choose the fragrance.

1/3 cup baking soda, enough dawn dishwashing liquid to moisten, 10 drops of essential oil. (I like cinnamon, vertiver, cedar or pine)

Certain neighbors ask for it regularly.

If it drys out, just add a few drops of water.

amych, I really hope your brother gets better news soon.

That's meant for amyTh, but no worries -- we occasionally get confused by our own handles, never mind everyone else doing it. Plus, she's 10 miles away, so I'll be sure that any stray vibes get redirected to the right place.

Much continued~ma for amyth's brother.

Living Room/Bedroom: Hardwood or carpet? If you have hardwood, get the Swiffer Vaccum for $30. A microfiber mitt you stick your hand in to dust. Pledge or lemon oil to polish.

They easiest way I have to clean the LR is to (a) Move all the books to an actual bookshelf (b) put all the things where they should be in the LR, and stuff that needs to go elsewhere, put it in a box or a bag to be taken where it needs to go. DO NOT PUT IT AWAY NOW. Put it on a chair (c) Dust a piece of furniture, then polish it. (d) Sweep or vaccuum. (e) Put the stuff in the bag in the proper places, so you don't have to clean it up later.

Light a candle.

Kitchen:

Get a bottle of Orange All-Purpose cleaner, the kind you dilute, and 2 spray bottles. One for the kitchen, one for the bathroom. A mop. A bucket. You can use the Orange cleaner to mop the floors, but if they are lino, I like Mop and Glo.

Magic Erasers, Hil. Use them on the fridge, the stove, tough things. Get some of the cheapo ones, and use gloves if they bother you.

For the kitchen, it's dishes, spray the stove and let it sit while you clear the counters, wipe the counters, change the trash, scrub the stove, sweep the floor, mop, clean the sink, slap a lemon half in the disposal.

Bathroom: A sponge for the bathroom, one with a scrubby side, and a roll of paper towels, and that second bottle of orange dilute cleaner. (Also, I use Comet in the tub, but YMMV.) I use Windex for the mirrors, but white vinegar solution works also; I just don't like my bathroom to smell like vinegar. Some of those pads-on-a-stick for the toilet work well. Or you can use a brush and toilet cleaner, but I like to NOT TOUCH THE TOILET STUFF. Ew.

If you keep the bathroom cleaning stuff in the bathroom, you can wipe down the sink once a week, or two and do the mirrors. I do the toilets whenever we have guests over, or when they get too grotty.

I clear out towels, clothes and old rug, clean sink and counter, sweep floor and mop. Sprinkle tub with Comet and let sit, while I clean and wipe down toilet, clean mirror. Scrub tub and put down clean rug and fresh towels.

Then I have a drink and a smoke, but that's optional.

When I'm really with it, I clean my bathroom while I'm swishing Listerine in my mouth. Getting ready for work, got the teeth brushed, using Listerine.... To distract myself from how it stings and burns, and to ensure that I keep it in there long enough, I'll quickly wipe down the sink, or the toilet, or the shower (though that takes a smidge longer than the other two). Just one task per day, and not too detailed a job, just a swish and a swipe, lick and a promise. Still, done that often, the fixtures don't get so nasty that they are hard to clean.

I'm sorry amych and amyth. I keep doing that!

Jesus Christ. I called in the middle of The Talk, Take Three. And they put me on speakerphone. So I got to be part of the hell for an hour.

"You know I'm completely on his side, right?" I said.

"Why am I not surprised," my mom said.

"Everyone's on my side!" my brother said.

"Yeah, pretty much everyone's on his side," I agreed.

"Who? Who's everyone?" she said.

"THE ENTIRE WORLD," I said. "Of sense," I added.

And then there was a whole lot of yelling about how we were so intelligent now after all that education they paid for, and it would have been better if we had not been educated, because then we would listen to them. I was sorry for not being racist, I was sorry for being intelligent, I was sorry we turned out so well, I was sorry that our vision of happiness was different from their vision of happiness.

Sometimes I had to hold the phone away from my ear, the yelling was so loud.

She asked if we'd thought about our sister and how it would affect her. I asked if she'd asked her what she thought, whether she thought her brother had hurt her by tarnishing our reputation and making it harder for her to find a husband, but of course they hadn't, because her opinions, like our opinions, don't matter.

They kept saying my brother's girlfriend's name wrong, and we corrected them, and they were like, whatever, and I said, "NO, not whatever, she has a name, Christ!" And they were like, whatever.

They were trying to hang on to their culture, and their culture did not allow Indians to marry non-Indians. Mixed-race couples didn't work, the existence of happy mixed-race couples was irrelevant, the fact that it was 2010 and there were more and more mixed-race couples was irrelevant, fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce only in America, Indian couples always make it work and don't get divorced and it's certainly not because they're too ashamed of the stigma to stop being unhappy in their relationship, Indians are the only ones who can compromise, and so on.

My mom had a complete breakdown over the fact that my brother had called her nosy. "I don't appreciate being called nosy!" she cried. I did not interject to say, "Dude, you're FUCKING NOSY." "If I was nosy, I would have found out about this a long time ago!" Okay, she had a point there. She clearly is not nosy enough.

They were afraid that he was going to lose them. "Why would I lose you?" my brother cried. "You're not going to come visit me? You're not going to come?" I wanted to reach through the phone and hug the poor kid. He was doing well, but he was a lot more emotional than I'd imagined from his IM retellings.

There was a silence. "Whether or not he loses you," I said, "is up to you." This wise statement was answered by my dad, who berated me for being so intelligent.

He asked me if I'd taken off the vacation time for the India trip, and I said my work schedule didn't allow it. My mom filled him in on my bullshit excuse, which was bullshit because my dad had worked for thirty years, and he took holidays and vacations, and he was a DOCTOR, so quit with my bullshit. I did not bother responding that the very fact that he WAS a doctor, for fuck's sake, meant he had a much more flexible schedule than someone in my industry, who had to adhere to deadlines and regulations.

Then they went on about how society would treat them. Look at all these Indian cultural events; how many white people do you see there???

"You don't think he's thought about this?" I asked. "You don't think he's thought about it all this time?"

"I don't know if he's thought about it!" she said. "I only just found about it."

"He understands the social implications, but he clearly thinks they're worth it because they are two human beings in a relationship!" At this, my dad cut me off because he's allergic to reason.

Then for some reason the subject changed to that e-mail I sent about not wanting to talk about marriage and why I had sent it to my aunt, and my brother and I had to explain the difference between sending and copying when it came to e-mail. And then they tried to ONCE AGAIN rope me back into the process, and I said that even if I knew it was good logically, I just could not deal with it emotionally.

And then I got shit for not visiting home twice or three times a year. And then I got shit for not returning phone calls. And when I honestly said that I had to prepare for the phone call turning into THIS, he did not accept that as a reason, of course, since this was new, and how many conversations ended up like this? A FUCKING LOT OF THEM GODDAMMIT YOU WERE THERE.

And then my mom asked me when I found out about my brother and his girlfriend. I said I didn't know when, it had been a while. She asked why I hadn't told them. "Because this would happen!" I said. She said that if she hadn't found out about them, I wouldn't have told her, is that right? "That is correct," I said. I wouldn't tell her that my brother was doing something wrong? "It's not wrong in my eyes, that's the point!"

"It's not like I was doing drugs," said my brother.

Oh God, there was also the part where my mom said we clearly wished we were born to white parents because then we would be white and everything would be fine. I said that no, then we wouldn't be who we are. No, we would be the same, but with white parents! Hurrah!

"I'm not going to play your game," I said. "I'm not going to let you tell us what we think."

The flogging eventually ended, and my dad said I could get back what I was doing. I didn't tell him that it was too late: I had called on my way to meet a friend for ice cream, and she waited for me for like fifteen or twenty minutes before I told her that she should just go since I didn't know how long this would go on, and then I walked back home.

My brother called while I was writing this and apologized for even jokingly suggesting they put me on speaker, as he didn't mean to put me through that, but he was really glad I was there to support him. He filled me in on a gem I had missed before joining. My mom had asked whether his girlfriend's parents knew that his parents didn't approve. Yes, they did, and they still supported the couple. And then my mom basically said that of course they would, since my brother was going to be a doctor, and she could just live off him. To his very minor credit, my dad called bullshit on that one. (Any points he won with that were entirely lost later on.)

There's more I can't remember or didn't hear clearly, but dear God, that was grueling. And I can expect a follow-up call tomorrow.

Oh, P-C, I love you so much for being not racist, and educated, and true to your culture as BOTH an American and an Indian, and, generally, being a mensch and a stand-up dude and an awesome brother. (Tomorrow, don't forget earplugs)