This morning, The Squire mentioned that the door between the kitchen and the utility room was covered with finger prints. He went to get the Mr. Clean, and I looked for a scrub brush. Before the dust settled, we had scrubbed both sides of that door, removed the cat flap, scoured it, and replaced it. We washed both sides of all the windows, and I washed the curtains and we rehung them. Before lunch, no less.
Don’t be surprised if it snows tomorrow.
This morning The Squire announced that we were going to clean off the picnic table on the patio, so he can put it on Freecycle. Now, cleaning it off is a good idea, but I am not too crazy about getting rid of it. It would be lovely to be able to sit out there in the evening and watch the foxes play in the Back 40, or just enjoy a cuppa and a good book.
We dragged over the trash can and the recycling bin, and had at it. It really didn’t take too long to get most of the junk off there, and we found quite a few things that were either MIA or would come in handy.
And then, yours truly began the sneaky process of piling it up again! Back when grandson Matthew was about five, he and I collaborated on putting together a McKinley doll house. http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/24504323 After it was finished, we decided to work on a lighthouse, but that project somehow died a-borning, so the kit went into the barn. Recently, Eldest Daughter, who is in the process of moving the South Carolina, offered one of my nephews a roll-top desk and chair that had belonged to my mum. He accepted and we brought the desk here, as it would be a lot more convenient for him to pick it up. Besides, he can collect his kids’ Christmas gifts while he’s at it. And by the way, would your sons want to build a lighthouse? The Squire and I spread out and checked out all of the pieces that are in that kit, and wrapped it back up.
“You know, with this table cleared I could bring Matthew’s McKinley down here and work on it here on the patio.” The Squire was not pleased with that suggestion, but the patio is cooler in the evening than the workshop, and I really do need to get on with this project. We shall see. It’s been sitting around, first in their basement, then in our barn, and now up it the workshop, and if I’m going to get it finished before Austin graduates from college, I need to hustle. he’s pushing two, already!
We also went through several of my parents boxes that had been stashed here and there. Lawsy, the stuff my mum kept! A quart zip bag full of keys. A bunch of receipts for donations to every cockamamie organization in the world. A huge bag of L’eggs eggs – which are probably worth a fortune on eBay.
And books! Another of my nephews is giving serious consideration to following in his grandfather’s footsteps and going to seminary, so I pulled all of the books I figured he could use and packed them up. He’s going to have to come get them, as mailing this thing is going to be very pricey.
All in all, it really looks good out there. It may not be obvious to the untrained eye, but we filled two trash bags and two recycling bins – and we’re not really finished yet!
We are having our annual Open House on December 13th, and are busily engaged in getting this place cleaned up. (Actually, the only reason we put ourselves through all this is to give the house a good going-over. Sort of our version of Passover cleaning.) I was using the steamer on the living room carpet when it suddenly began spewing hot water everywhere and would not suck it back up.
The Squire took it outside and got it to the point where it will suck up the water, but it won’t spray, so I had to dump the hot soapy water into a pan and go over half of the living room floor with a scrub brush.
Except that a thorough search did not locate a proper scrub brush, so I was reduced to using the toilet brush. Look, a brush is a brush, right?
And thereby hangs a tale…
Not too long after we were married our youngest daughter, who was maybe nine or ten at the most, offered to polish her dad’s shoes for him. It was a Friday night, and we let the kids stay up late to watch TV, so instead of staying in the bathroom to polish the shoes, she carried the bottle of black polish and his shoes through the dining room, into the living room, past the sofa, and finally sat the bottle on the end table.
She came upstairs to tell us she had “spilled some shoe polish”. She had left a trail of black spots all through the house, including over the back and seat of the sofa. We told her to go to bed and we’d clean it up. Actually, this was for her own safety, as one or the other of us would have killed her if she’d stuck around – and she knew it! I filled a scrub bucket with hot soapy water, and since we only had one scrub brush, I got on my hands and knees with that and The Squire began working on the sofa with the only other tool at hand – the toilet brush.
We have always slept in the nude, even before we even knew each other. My winter pyjamas is a pair of wool socks. (It’s a good use for odd socks, and Heaven knows we all have those!) When we came down to see what sort of “spill” we had to deal with, we’d both wrapped a towel around ourselves, but they soon came unfastened, and we’d ended up with them tossed around our necks.
So you had two nekkid people, wearing socks, with towels around their necks, mumbling curses, and wielding toilet brushes. It is, as I have often said, fortunate we have no close neighbours.
And we never did get the polish off the end table.
We have been looking for that blasted dead mouse for about a week now, without much luck. We gave the TV room side a good going-over a couple of days ago. That side has what I would have considered the most likely spots – plenty of tubs of costumes, which have now been moved to the attic, thank you very much – but no luck.
The Squire insisted the smell was much stronger near the sewing machine. I tilted it back and even looked up inside it, but no go. We pulled everything out from under the bed – two large flat boxes, which hold patterns and fabric for Colonial outfits, plus oodles of tissue paper – and still didn’t find anything. We even looked under the mattress and between the mattress and the box spring. Finally, we pulled the head of the bed away from the wall, but we still didn’t see any moldering bodies on the carpet.
Just as we were pushing the bed back, a flicker of movement caught my eye, as the mouse fell from the edge of the bedframe onto the floor. It had climbed up off the floor, I suppose, to avoid Sir Edmund’s attention and died, out of sight but definitely not out of mind.
He was tenderly wrapped in a tissue paper shroud and buried with great ceremony in the trashcan outside.
The song is ended, but the melody lingers on. Phew! Quick, Henry! The Lysol!
thisendoftheswamp 