our new maid is so efficient it's alarming. i can't put anything on the floor, not even my bag, before she swoops down and hangs it on a peg behind my door. if i'd poured my pens out onto my desk to write something, i only have to be out of my room to get a drink before they are all back in my pencil case. i'd unpinned my hair after the show last night, and there were bobby pins lying on the table, and this morning they are all gone, neatly placed in a box, on the dresser. yes the dresser. let me tell you about this dresser. stray hairbrushes find themselves whisked from the bed or the bookshelf and firmly planted in a tall container on the dressing table, the surface of which used to be a litter of bottles and tubes and jars lying haphazardly, including sideways. and now they're neatly arranged on either side of the mirror, (the mirror shines, she polished it) biggest bottles on the inside, a graduation of sizes and heights and colour radiating outwards, small jars stacked on big, lipsticks standing in a row facing the same direction. it's artistic from any angle. i tell you, she needs to get a job designing movie sets, not cleaning my room. and she's got better timing than any of our previous maids. she seems to just be waiting in the mornings for the moment my lights come on. she only has to hear me brushing my teeth and when i come back to my room she's making my bed. she doesn't just fluff up your pillows and fold the blanket either. she takes everything off your bed and remakes it. this also means she takes all my books off the bed and lines them up on the headboard, neatly, spines facing one way. i am terrorised by her sense of order. she's no more than 20 i think, but i feel as if she's a 50 year old housekeeper who will sternly whack me on the knuckles if i ever place a toe of disorder in her path. i can't think how delighted my mother must be. someone after her own heart at last!

fuller's skin diary: last night i said it was the diary of the farmgirl, but it isn't. i'm somewhat confused and not very sure whose it is. not the girl at anyrate. i think the foetus.

out tonight to see le cri du monde with joel. if he is done kayaking early.