Housekeeping

           Housekeeping is not my favorite sport. I wouldn’t say I’m a lousy housekeeper, but it wouldn’t be far off the mark.

          I keep my dishes washed. Probably because I like to wash dishes. I keep the laundry caught up. Probably because there isn’t a ton of it. Everything else? It’s on an as-needed basis.

          We had company coming this week. The Pastor’s daughter Heidi and his wife Mary came in early December and made book boxes. This week they were coming back to paint them.

          “Maybe I’ll come along this time and visit with Mike,” Pastor Jay said.

          Pastor Jay has allergies. More specifically, he’s allergic to cats and we have four.

          “Okay,” I told him. “But I’m a crappy housekeeper!”

          Forewarned is forearmed.

          I had it in my mind that in the very least I would vacuum and dust. Then I found myself with a light craft week. All I’ve committed to doing was Valentine gnomes for my beautiful, feisty, redheaded neighbor, Miss Rosie, and she didn’t need them until the week after Valentine’s Day. That’s when her ladies group meets and that’s when she’d give them their Valentine gift.

          I’ve got the prospect of another porch sign commission coming up and no boards ready. Monday was the warmest day of the week so I went out on the patio to sand boards. I used my paint towel under my board on the patio table. I know from past experience that if I put my board directly on the table it’ll leave black marks on it.

          I sanded one board.

          No problem.

          I sanded the first side of the second board.

          Still no problem.

          I flipped the board over was almost done with it when the belt sander decided to eat my towel. It happened so fast!

          Aye-yi-yi, doggonit, dagnabbit, and oh shhh...oot all wrapped up in one!

          I tried to pull the towel out but couldn’t. It was in there so tight!

          I needed help and went to get my handsome mountain man. “Guess what happened?”

          “What?”

          “I got a towel caught in the belt sander and can’t get it out.”

          Mike got up out of his recliner and came to help me.

          He pulled and pulled on the towel and it wouldn’t come out. I held the sander and he used both hands to pull with all his strength and it still wouldn’t budge.

          “I’ll go Google it,” I said and went in to the computer.

          The only video I found was a different belt sander but the guy took it apart and was able to get his cord out. He had to put a new cord on it, too.

          Mike brought the sander in and we took it apart. Unfortunately, because of the way this one’s made, it didn’t help. What Mike did end up doing was using a screwdriver to reverse the rotation of the belt and walked that towel right on out.

          You know how when you take something apart it never goes back together the same way, right? We had a heck of time getting the cord to lay where it belonged but with persistence, two heads and four hands, we did eventually get it.

          I took the sander out to the patio, plugged it in, and it rattles like crazy. I haven’t tried to sand anything with it yet, but one thing’s for sure. I won’t be doing it on the patio table with a towel under it anymore.

          Something else Mike did was fix my giant spinner — again!

          I was cleaning in the pantry area when he came in from welding on the front patio.

         “PEG!” he yells. I’ve heard that tone before and knew nothing good was coming next. My heart skipped a beat as I dropped what I was doing. We met in the kitchen.

          “I need a Band-Aid,” he said holding up a hand dripping with blood.

          “What did you do!” I demanded.

          “My screwdriver slipped and I came down on the edge of a blade.”

          I got Band-Aids while Mike washed it off. He was holding paper towels to his fingers when I got back. He lifted the towels to let me look.

          “Let me take a picture,” I said.

          “No. Just put the bandaides on.”

          His blood thinners are working and he bled quite a lot, even soaking the Band-Aids and needing a fresh change.

          He got the spinner fixed and put back out.

          A few days later we had high winds and it’s broken again. The problem is it wobbles and there isn’t any way to keep it from doing that. Mike took it down again and I know if he mulls it over, he’ll come up with something.

          Four days later he let me take a picture of his fingers.

          Man! Feeling the pain of others is a pain! I get a shock to my knees that hurts every time I look at it!     

          So, the pantry I was cleaning when Mike got hurt?

          I had not intended to clean the pantry. What happened was I walked through there and noticed all the dust!

          Mike’s going to give Pastor Jay the grand tour and he’s going to see that, I thought.

          I have shelves of stuff I don’t use taking up so much space that could be used for something else. On an impulse, I went to the wayback and raided my stash of boxes. I started packing up wine glasses, coffee cups, bowls, sundae dishes, and various other odds and ends I didn’t think I’d use.

          The dust and spiderwebs were abundant. One of the culprits in the amount of dust was that there was a litterbox on the floor beneath the shelves. Scoopable cat litter makes so much dust!

          “Did you wash everything first?” Mike asked on one of his trips through.

          “No. Even if I washed ‘em first, you’d still wash them when you took them out of storage so I’m not going to waste my time.”

          You’re gonna laugh when you see the pictures.

          Before...

         ... and after.

          “Peg, it doesn’t look all that different,” you say.

          I know, right!

          I did leave some fancy glass jars and extra drinking glasses, a cake dish and stand that I may use but I took out eight boxes of stuff.

          When I had all the useless stuff out and the shelves wiped down, I went in search of stuff to put there. Stuff that was on the floor because there was no place else to put it, found a home on a shelf. My big pots that were on the floor under the shelves found a shelf all their own. My extra cleaning supplies found a home. So even though the shelves are as full as they were before, they’re not as crowded and my house is a little less cluttered.

          “The Buccis should come more often,” Mike said. That’s the Pastor’s last name.

          On Monday I have another little girl coming. Addi started a wire project months and months ago. I bet it’s been almost a year now. We never found the time in our schedules to finish it. At least I won’t have to do much by way of housework to be ready for her visit.

          Cleaning the pantry took all day!

          The next morning, we had golden sunlight.

          The Buccis wouldn’t be here until two. I had the morning to dust and vacuum the rest of the house so it was as fresh as it could be.

          In Raini’s bed under the table, I found this!

          Where did they come from? I wondered.

          I picked up the now unstuffed animal that was in her bed. Besides all the stuffing that she’d already pulled out, there was a mesh bag sewn inside that contained these little plastic pellets. I pulled it free and see there’s still some pellets in the bottom.

          What in the world is or was the purpose of this? 

          Raini has no manners and to keep her from jumping all over the Buccis, I kenneled both her and Bondi.

          I’ll tell you what. Those girls were so good! They never fussed or made any sound even though we don’t normally kennel them.

After the Buccis had been here for a couple of hours, we let the girls out, and sure enough, Raini jumped up on them.

          We had a super nice visit and the girls got their book boxes painted.

          I finished the Valentine gnomes Miss Rosie ordered and we took them to her.

          Bondi loves to go with us. I told her no but she sat at Mike’s feet as he was putting his jacket on, her tail waggin’, eyes adoring, and he couldn’t deny her.

“Okay,” he said. “You can go.”

“She’ll pee on their floor,” I said. Bondi still excited pees. But I know that Rosie hasn’t seen Bondi in a while and she’d enjoy a visit from her. “But we’ll take her. The Kipps won’t care.”

And they don’t. They just grab a paper towel and wipe it up.

You should see the tire ruts in the Kipps’ front yard! A truck didn’t make the curve and ended up in the yard. It took him about twenty minutes to get straightened around so he could get across the bridge.

“He came up to the house and apologized,” that handsome Lamar Kipp told us. “He said he’d send someone out to repair the damage.”

“Yeah. We’ll see if that ever happens,” Miss Rosie said.

“If not, then I know someone who’ll go down and fix it,” Lamar said.

“Yeah, and he’s sitting right here,” Miss Rosie said and nodded towards Lamar.

I don’t know that Bondi did excited pee, but if she did it only added a small puddle to the puddles that Mike and I had already left when the snow melted from our boots.

A sunrise.

We got a letter from the gas company concerning the well they were drilling down below us, the one I showed you pictures of before. They said they hit a fault and had to stop drilling. Now they have to apply for new permits to drill in a different direction.

From what I can tell, not that I’m any expert at all, the fault is made up of mostly limestone and gas is found in shale.

We took a trip up to the well site and it’s empty! They hauled everything out!

Before...

After.

We took a shopping trip down to Dickson City. The ice sculptures at Clark’s Summit are not holding up well.

The only other picture I took was of an old silo. I’m always surprised when we go by and it’s still standing.

           Did I tell you that I put a box on top of my desk for Tiger?

          On top of my desk was a DVD/VCR combo. On top of that is where I’d put a box of card making paper left over from Christmas. Tiger would get in it and sleep. I didn’t really want cat hair all over my stuff so I took it down and put a bed up there for him.

          One day, Tiger rolled over, the bed came off the edge of the player, he tipped out, rolled down over my desk and the whole way to the floor. I moved stuff around, got him a deep box and put some no-skid under it so he wouldn’t fall again.

          Tiger liked his box.

          Unfortunately, so did Blackie.

          A couple of times Tiger went to get in his box only to find it already occupied. I tried to convince him there was room enough in there for two but he wasn’t having any of that!

          I moved my paint box off the top of the player and put another box up there.

          Tiger doesn’t seem to mind the shallower box and maybe even prefers it. I’ve seen him bypass the big one even when it was empty.

          We had a mouse.

          I never saw him but I know that Blackie did. Several times in the week I caught him on stakeout.

          I decided to set a trap.

          Two nights in a row this slick Willie sprung my trap and took the bait without getting caught.

          The third night I was laying in bed still reading and I hear a scratching sound. I thought it was one of the cats doing something. Raini heard it too and took off barking, waking Mike up. She was back in a few minutes. A few minutes later we hear the noise again, and again Raini took off barking. Mike was getting pretty upset so I got up to see what was going on.

          Raini led me to the source of the sound. Willie wasn’t as slick this time and got caught — but he wasn’t dead. He’d kick his feet and scoot the wooden mouse trap around on the shelf, making the noise we’d heard.

          I picked up the trap, opened it and let the mouse fall to the floor for Raini. I was thinking he was half-dead and I was all-wrong. He took off and Raini took off after him. I was afraid she wouldn’t get him but she did. Then, without being told, she took her mouse outside.

          Saturday night was another night of Raini barking and waking us up, not once, but twice. The second time, when she came back to bed, she bumped Bondi.

          Bondi sleeps under the covers.

          Bondi hates to be woken up as much as Mike does.

          Bondi snipped at the closest thing which happened to be the outside of my right knee!

          “OWW,” I screamed, sitting straight up and coming fully awake.

          “What’s wrong?” Mike asked, awake again, too.

          “BONDI BIT ME!”

          It hurt so bad and I’m really surprised it didn’t immediately bleed. I really thought it was one of those injuries that takes a while for the blood to seep up to the surface and I’d wake up to bloody sheets. But Bondi didn’t even break the skin.

          “We’re going to have to do something else with Raini,” Mike said.

          “Like what?” I asked.

          “Kennel her.”

          Guess where Raini’s sleeping tonight.     

           Let’s call this one done!