So, obviously, finding new life in the study carpet put a bit of a crimp in our plans to have everything back on the shelves and a lovely, sweet-smelling new work space by the end of the weekend.

And I was so looking forward to it: I love my little house, and try hard to make it both comfortable and attractive, and I’m so sick of spending all my days and half my nights in the ugliest, least comfortable room in the house.

I had grand plans. New curtains. A few pictures. A hot-pink plastic cuckoo clock. You know: the usual.

And then the mould. And the waiting for the real-estate agent to get a plumber out to us. Then the news that the whole shower has to be ripped out (goodbye, late ’50s fiberglass shell), but that we have to wait a week before we can have the carpet cleaned and get back into the study.

So now we live in a labyrinth of Victorian novels, video games, and manuscript notes. The spare room looks as though a bookshop exploded in it.

But in the interim, at least I’ve stripped the study back to the bare essentials, waiting until I can actually get the new curtains, the pictures, the cuckoo clock up on the walls and start filling the shelves again:

At least this much is certain: when I spring clean, I do it thoroughly.

So, as anyone who is also connected to me in any of numerous forms of social networking already knows, we embarked on a thorough spring cleaning of the house a fortnight ago.

Since we can only clean on the weekends, we’re only two rooms through the process. (Luckily, this is a tiny house.)

This past weekend was dedicated to the study, a room that, as you can see, radically needed a thorough spring cleaning:

(Note that I have chosen to present the photographs in black-and-white form, to make them look “arty” rather than “squalid”.)

And all was progressing just beautifully, despite various complaints from Nick, until we discovered, after moving a bookcase, that the shower had apparently been leaking directly through the wall for some time, creating new life in the fertile ground of an ancient rental-house carpet.

It was at roughly that point that the spring cleaning passed from “annual chore” to “epic adventure” …

NICK: Treena is a specialist in happiness and joy.
ME: No, I’m a nineteenth-century scholar. You must have me confused with someone else.
NICK: Oh, I’m a specialist in happiness and joy!

Then he did a little dance.

ME: Here, get rid of this.
NICK: Recycling?
ME: Well, it’s an empty cardboard tube, so I don’t know what else you’d do with it.
NICK: I’m just going to pretend it’s a light saber for two minutes first.

ME: Well, that’s me done. How am I ever going to catch a man now?
NICK: You’ve caught me hook, line, and sinker.
ME: But …
NICK: And I’m the closest to a man you can expect.
ME: But I had a witty riposte!
NICK: Yeah, I holed that one below the waterline.

NICK: I’m seriously considering asking for two days off before the Ekka holiday.
ME: Oh, good! We can finish the spring cleaning in one go.
NICK: Right, gone off that idea fairly comprehensively. Dammit, woman!

Strange things happen during Doctor Who:

ME: Why is one of that man’s eyes so bloodshot? Is he having an affair?
(Pause)
ME: I mean, a stroke. Is he having a stroke?
NICK: What?
ME: Sorry.
NICK: Well, that was a Freudian slip.
ME: I’m not having an affair!
NICK: So you say.

ME: How is it that this spring-cleaning was your idea, but I’m doing three-quarters of the work?
NICK: I’m working!
ME: I don’t dispute that. I’m just saying you’re only doing one-quarter of it.
NICK: My pride rises up in revolt at that idea.
ME: Well, then, your pride can’t count.

WIZARD: Do you want me to send a squirrel messenger to the Watch? The enchantment takes ten minutes, but I have to catch the squirrel first.

In which we discuss my shifting of an old photograph of us into a new, Apple-branded photo frame.

ME: I thought it was apt, because you love your Mac more than you love me.
NICK: Yeah.
ME: Were you listening to what I just said?
NICK: Yeah.
(Pause)
NICK: I love you?
ME: You weren’t listening to what I said at all, were you?
NICK: I was … listening to what I thought you said. And I’m just now realising that may not have been the same thing as what you actually said.
(Pause)
NICK: Bugger.

In which we discuss the horrible, horrible music in the Jon Pertwee episode “The Sea Devils”, which had already prompted Nick to complain, “That video game conference they’re holding next door is really distracting”.

NICK: This is a picture of the machine that made those horrible noises.
ME: That’s terribly interesting.
NICK: I don’t think you’re treating this with the appropriate level of interest.
ME: Oh, I think you’ll find that I am.

NICK: Katy Manning’s stunt double was actually Stuart Fell.
ME: But I said on Twitter it was Terry Walsh.
NICK: I know.
ME: Well, if you want to out me on Twitter as not recognising Terry Walsh when I see him in a ladies’ pantsuit …
NICK: Not at all!
(Pause)
ME: Dammit, I’m going to have to do it myself. The curse of being an academic.
NICK: What, having a sense of intellectual honesty? I can see where that might be inconvenient.

ME: This episode of Farscape is so Rashōmon-y.
NICK: But it doesn’t seem to be for any purpose. Or to make any sense.
ME: Yeah. I don’t mind a Rashōmon episode, as long as there’s some kind of Rashōmon-ale behind it.

ME: The Google+ mobile version is running really slowly at the moment. I wonder if it’s because they’ve launched the app version?
NICK: I don’t know. They’re pretty keen on the Web.
(Pause)
ME: Google are “pretty keen” on the Web, eh?
NICK: I’m too tired for more complex thoughts.
ME: Honey, if you’re too tired for a more complex thought than “Google are pretty keen on the Web”, I think you’re technically dead.
NICK: That’s harsh.

In the DVD section:

ME: Oh, Highlander!
NICK: There can only be one of those DVDs. Oh, no: there’s two. What a disappointment.
ME: Don’t be silly, honey. One of them will behead the other shortly. But they can’t do it while we mundane people are watching.