Productive. And You?

How was your weekend, dearest darlings?

Me? I have embarked on my semi-annual scrub as much of the shit out of the house as I can. Forced death march cleaning, if you will.

To whit, I submit the following achieved over the past few days:

• vacuumed whole damn house, including stairs
• dusted whole damn house, even under the stereo equipment, as much as humanly possible
• mopped every square inch of non-carped covered floor space (and a little carpet, too, drat that sloppy mop.)
• cleaned fridge, removing all comestibles and retiring those who waved back at me. I also snuck 2 of the 8 jars of mustard in the door (yes. 8. Not counting the 2-3 jars of mustard pretzel dip) into the great beyond. Charles has a condiment addiction.
• moved and cleaned under every bit of kitchen counter, including where the computer and its attendant 47 cords sits, on the bit of desk by the door
• cleaned the microwave
• did mounds of laundry, folded, and put away
• put away all the toys in the playroom properly, not just in the nearest bin or kicked under the couch
• moved said couch and pulled out hiding toys (human and dog), also found new colony of friendly green mold on the wall behind the couch and another, less friendly but darker and fuzzier colony, on the carpet. I suspect it was once an errant raisin or such, which must have traveled there on its own as it is widely known that we do not let those of small stature eat in the playroom (ahem)
• destroyed both mold colonies clandestinely, so as not to invite the wrath of the endangered species groups (I have enough to do without filling out their forms in triplicate)
• planned several lovely meals
• grocery shopped for said lovely meals
• drooled over the consuming of the future lovely meals
• scrubbed the bathrooms, including the showers
• de-scaled our shower with lemon juice (I curse you, Midwestern hard water)
• removed the little cover thingies from the faucets and de-grimed them (more life systems lost)
• filled the hand soap dispensers
• emptied the trash
• washed, folded and put away more laundry
• sorted the pile of papers on the counter into a smaller pile of papers (now on its side!) on the counter
• cleaned the desk in the study (now! with clean desk top!)
• watered the plants
• cleaned the windows, as much as possible, given that 2 of the 8 surfaces are, to my persistent fiddling, still inaccessible to all but grime and small bugs. Now, instead of looking filthy, they just look dirty and streaky, quite an improvement, I assure you.

It is with this last that I nearly met my match. I have now, officially, found a new most hated household chore. It used to be cleaning the shower. All that scrubbing up and down, combined with the lemon juice descaling, well, just hate, hate, hate it.

Hah. No longer.

You remember my deeply ingrained bug phobia? I am sure I have mentioned it a time or two. How much the crawly, segmented, and crunchy skeeve me to the max and leave me jumping 5 feet back and squealing like a girl? Well, at least in my head. I have learned to suppress this reaction much of the time.

Now think of what you find on the window sill, between the window proper and the storm window or screen. Yes. Bugs. Mostly dead bugs. I also answered my question of: "Is it better to have a sill of dead bugs or live ones?"

The answer is: Live ones are better, at least better than dead ones who have been there through at least a few seasons and are no longer easily detachable from the window sill or its attendant parts. Bugs that are removable via vacuum are more desirable than those that must be removed via hand. Hand swathed in a roll of paper towels, none-the-less, but still hand. Specifically my hand. Yet remove them I must. All tolled, many hundreds. No exaggeration. Easily over a hundred alone on the loft window sill. Several very large. But remove them, I did, as much as my swathed hand could reach. Sadly, I did not clean the windows in the mudroom, this odd afterthought of a room attached to the back of the house, sitting in the middle of the deck. It was billed as a "3-seasons-room" as it has a heater and a ceiling fan, although what moron would spend the $800 dollars to heat such a box in a Wisconsin winter, I ask you. So, we use it for muddy boots and some gardening stuff and kid outside toys. The cookbooks also live there, as there is no room for them in the house at present, and the room is accessible through the kitchen. So there are about 10 more windows filled with buggy corpse horrors for me to contemplate. My skin is crawling as I type.

And now, I will answer your burning question: Why the hell did I do all this? Are we moving?

No, sillies! We are NEVER MOVING, AGAIN, remember?

My mom and step-dad are coming for a week!

No! My lovely mum is most certainly NOT one of those who is a clean freak. She successfully plowed a compromise of clean but not pristine through our childhoods, all while working full-time. She would no more say anything should I have a house filled with piles of rotting food and flies than fly to the moon. She would then announce that she was feeling "useless" or some suchness and casually start to clean things up, making it feel like a natural, even fun thing to do. I just feel this compulsion to clean for guests. All guests. Even my mum.

I look at as a good thing. Can you imagine the pile of rotting insect corpses on the window sill were it otherwise? In a few years, they would block out the sun.