I signed up to be a panelist for the Diarist.net Awards, and we're currently in the process of reading so we can vote. I did this, because a) I was curious, and b) I thought I'd need something to do since I wasn't training for a race anymore.

Now everyone knows what they say about curiosity. I'm always too curious for my own good, but I am happy to learn this whole process and be a part of it. This is way more involved than I ever could have imagined. In particular, choosing site award finalists is much more difficult than I thought, though considering how much I actually thought about it, it couldn't be anything but. The entry nominations were more difficult during the validation process, but now that we're reading, site nominations are by far the more labor intensive, because we don't just have to read one entry. We're reading lots of entries to get a feel for the writing, checking links to see what other goodies might be hidden in the site and looking at the design itself. Then we're supposed to whittle these down to three we think are deserving of a finalist nod. No one told me this would be lots of hard work. I like reading journals and all, but damn. My curiosity has most assuredly been put to rest.

As for that "needing something to do" bit, well� I'm an idiot. I have plenty to do, plenty that's been waiting to be done since I quit sponging off my parents by moving out of their house, and plenty of potential things to do that I won't be doing, because I have too damn much to do! I obviously wasn't thinking at all when I signed up for this task.

My house is a pigsty. No, I'm not lying or exaggerating. I have four cereal boxes sitting on my dining room table along with a huge stack of newspapers, two shoeboxes, a sewing machine I used three weeks ago and the remains of a spilled fruit cup from this morning, and I even cleaned it off to get it to that state. We haven't eaten at the table in weeks. Instead we eat at the coffee table, which is equally as messy but easier to shuffle because there are no massive sewing machines in the way. And God forbid you should drop any of your food onto the floor, because it will be swallowed up in the layer of dog hair that covers the carpet. There is no five second rule in this house unless you like getting insoluble fiber of the animal variety in your diet.

A fast-talking, pain-in-the-ass salesman tried to come to my aid the other day when he chose my (oh yeah, it's my house now!) house over all the neighbor's as a target to sell his nifty cleaning product. The dog at the door did not discourage him, even when I had to hold her back to keep her from bolting out the door. He didn't know she was just looking for a means of escape. For all he knew, she was a vicious beast, waiting for the opportunity to snack on citrus-scented salesmen. But like I said, it didn't matter. His pitch was off and running, despite my immediate refusal of his product.

Again, I'm a victim of being too nice, because I didn't interrupt as he deified his cleaning solution. He told me all the things it cleans and proceeded to clean every square inch of my threshold since I wouldn't let him past the front door. He told me how safe his product was and unscrewed the spray bottle to lick the length of the spray nozzle tube as proof. For a split-second, I considered telling him I didn't know that his body wasn't riddled with tumors from having sucked on too much cleaner, but he was already telling me where he was from and where the company was based as he sprayed the flowers on my porch for more proof of the safety of his product. Those flowers are now actually faded where they were sprayed. Makes me glad I didn't take a swig of the stuff to savor its citrus-y flavor.

He cleaned the window on the door, the brass hinges of the door, the front step and then looked for spots on my carpet to clean. Surprisingly, he couldn't find any but one small tar spot right inside the door. Had I let him in the house, there were spots galore for him to clean, but I was looking to get rid of him, not to let him prove the value of his wares. He did get the tar spot out, but the other spot he "cleaned" looked exactly the same despite the dirt his towel picked up.

I give him credit for trying, but I wasn't going to be buying this stuff, and I told him so after what seemed like fifteen whole minutes of patience (it was probably more like five). He looked very disappointed, like I was obligated to buy the stuff after he made my entry so sparkling clean. Even though I felt bad for letting him go through the effort, I had told him right up front I wasn't interested. He didn't ask if he could show me some things. He just did them, and since I was brought up to be a polite girl who doesn't interrupt, I let him go. It's not like I could have gotten a word in edgewise with all his talk of "the van being right around the corner to pick him up", "staying in the Holiday Inn", " the man around the corner was amazed at how it cleaned his rims" as he waved his arm around the neighborhood, and "I'm from Richmond, Virginia." He didn't go off in a huff and did wish me a nice day. He was probably most disappointed in that he misjudged me as a guilt-ridden schmuck who would buy the stuff to get him to leave me alone because I couldn't say no.

Speaking of schmucks, it's a good thing John wasn't home. He's been the victim of the door-to-door cleaning solution man, and there's still a gallon of that crap sitting in the garage of the house where we lived in Nebraska. You should have heard how he raved about this cleaner when I came home that day. He was trying to help me, and I'll give him that, but that stuff sucked. Straight water cleaned better. The things that really did the cleaning were the steel and brass brushes and the green and black scratchy pads that came with the cleaner. But John was convinced it was the cleaner that took the rust off the driveway and the grease that was actually mud off the garage door. At least he believed it until I showed him how I could do the same thing with a hose and a steel brush. I give him shit to this day about that cleaner, and he still tries to tell me it worked at least a little bit.

The citrus cleaner this guy was selling did seem to clean without the aid of brushes or scratchy pads. I'm sure it was better, but I'm happy with my basic arsenal of Windex, Soft Scrub, bleach and Pine Sol. I certainly don't need to be spending money on something I hardly ever use. I mean, I don't clean. Why do I need cleaner? And now that a couple days have passed and my flowers are faded and the two "spots" he cleaned on my carpet are now actual dirty spots, I'm glad I resisted. Yes, I sat through his spiel and wasted five whole minutes of my important life, but it served for a halfway decent story.

I really do have to clean now. I can't escape it without suffering massive embarrassment when the sitter comes over tonight. I have to at least rearrange the mess, so it looks like I did something from the time she was here a week ago. I can't believe I let people see this. I can't believe I'm going out tonight in this cold. I can't believe I thought I would need something to keep me occupied. I have sixteen windows open on my computer right now. I don't like having more than four or five. I'm drowning in obligations. Someone shoot me.