Spring cleaning

I've been spring cleaning this week.   That means moving furniture, vacuuming the back side, underneath, wiping dust kitties off the walls and baseboards, vacuuming air returns and heat vents, etc.  Good stuff.  I feel very productive.  I've hit a couple of bumps, like an achy ankle, but I am back after it today.  The sister has no sympathy for the aches and pains of middle age.  She's one of those stoic rocky mountain dwellers that wouldn't dream of complaining about an ache or pain.  What she doesn't know is that for me, those aches I whine about generally are covering up a deeper, harder to ease ache.  The kind of ache that goes deep into your soul and renders you motionless for hours at a time.  I managed to shake it off and get back to the task at hand today.

Today's tasks involved moving a hardwood buffet full of dishes, a large chair, many knick knacks, water dispenser, rocking chair, dog dish...  all shifted to one side of the room.  I swept, and diligently got out the swiffer wet.  I stood back, nostrils full of the weird apple scent of swiffer, and surveyed my work.  Sigh.  There was no apparent difference in the look of the floor.  Part of the problem is that this floor has a history.  This house was probably built in the twenties or thirties, then at some point in its dubious history,  it was moved across town.  It is a solid house, lovely old lathe and plaster walls, nice wood floors, but moving an entire house tends to jostle things around some.  Cracks in the plaster and the flooring doesn't quite fit together right.  That and it suffered the indignity of being covered with carpet for some unknown period of its life.

I gave up on the floor for the moment, having been distracted by the drapes.  Upon close inspection, the bottom six inches of the drapes were completely covered in cat/dog hair.  Gross.  I decide to take them down and wash them.  Drapes down, head to the basement for the laundry.  Uh oh.  The load of dish towels, dish rags and cleaning rags in the washer smells foul.  The only cure for that is bleach.  Do we have bleach?  I text the sister.....  probably not.  Ok, fine.  I want Pinesol anyway.  So I sniff the armpit to make sure I'm not too offensive, slap my hair back in a headband and go to Walmart.  Bleach, Pinesol, and scrubber.

  Home again.  Bleach in washer with smelly towels.  Pinesol in a bucket of hot water, scrubber in hand.  I get down on my knees and begin to scrub.  Mind you, this floor hasn't had a finish in many, many years.  It's on the long list of fixer up projects, but first we have to scrape the popcorn off the ceiling.  Anyway, I find myself on my knees and the pity party begins.  "What the heck am I doing down here?", a rhetorical question.  I was quite surprised to hear a voice in my head reply, "Scrubbing the floor."   "That question was rhetorical," I  snapped. "Of course I know I'm scrubbing the floor.  I just can't figure out why."  Then the voice replies, "Because you didn't think it was clean enough."  What the heck?  Why can't I just scrub and whine to myself without being interrupted!  "If this is God talking to me, I have a thing or two to discuss with you...."  So, I scrub away, and whine away, and complain heartily.  No further vocal interruption.   Some time later, I'm mopping up with rinse water, and attempting to apply wax that may date back to Adam to a floor that has not one bit of finish on it. Furniture is then all shifted to the other side of the room, and the process repeated.

When the work was finished, I stood back and looked it over, satisfied with my effort. "Sometimes, swiffer just doesn't cut it."  And the voice in my head says, "You're right.  Thorough cleaning is done on your knees."