Gathering the Weapons
Somebody up there is having a big laugh. Guffawing, I’m sure.
First, a disclaimer:
I do not hate housecleaning. If I’m
worried or angry, it’s great therapy.
And when done on a regular basis, it’s manageable.
BUT . . . when we’re involved in a project for several days
or weeks and things get backed up, I get just a tad overwhelmed (see sitting on
edge of bed, head in hands, alternately muttering “Where do I start? It’s overwhelming” and humming “Nobody Knows
the Trouble I’ve Seen”).
Now, consider that about three weeks ago an automatic door
slammed into my left arm, which caused an equal and opposite reaction in my
right arm- or some such thing. All I
know is something snapped in my back/shoulder and suddenly I could not lift my
right arm without feeling that a tiger was ripping it off at the shoulder
joint. The pain ebbed, along with the
nausea that accompanied it, in about twenty minutes. Still my arm hurt when I lifted it and became
so weak I couldn’t lift a plate to the cupboard.
Fast forward two weeks.
I’m at the doctor’s for a regular checkup. I explain the unhandy
situation with my right arm. She engages
me in a series of exercises and then declares “Tendonitis! Take an anti-inflammatory for two weeks and
DON’T USE YOUR ARM.” Note: she, a mother of young children and a busy
physician, said this with a straight face.
Boy, you should have seen me a couple of nights later,
beating pudding with a wire whisk with my left arm.
So, with dust bunnies arming and forming into brigades in
the corners, I did what any sensible woman would do. I called someone whom I shall only refer to
from now on as The Cleaning Lady.
The Cleaning Lady had been referred to me with
accolades. Before her first engagement,
she’d come to the house, toured it, listened to my expectations, and quoted a
price. The Cleaning Lady was expensive.
But, hey, if she did a good job and I used her services only three or
four times a year, I was ok with that. We
understood that she would work me into her schedule when I needed her and I
understood that might mean waiting a few days when I called upon her.
The first time we gave her work a grade of Pretty Darn
Good. I overlooked the fact that she had
failed to sweep and mop under the dining table and that I had to ask her to
re-clean the shower door glass since it looked as if someone had wrung a rag out
in a mud puddle and then swiped it across the glass. Since the previous cleaning service had
failed to wash the soap dishes beside each of our bathroom sinks, I estimated
that we were coming up in the world.
And so, I texted The Cleaning Lady. Why, yes, and thank you for asking, I did try
calling first. Apparently, however, few
people under the age of fifty actually answer their phones. The phone app is
really a screening app to keep pesky people in your life from actually talking to
you. The instrument itself is more
regularly employed as a selfie taker, tweeting unit, and game device.
After some time, she responded and we agreed she’d come
Thursday.
Thursday was half over before I heard from her. We’d had snow and she’d had to drive her son
to school near Cincinnati, and she was caught in a bad traffic jam on the way
back, and she had to stop to buy cleaning supplies. Did I still want her to come? Or could we make it Friday or Saturday? That would be fine. She’d call me Thursday night to let me know
which day she’d come.
Half of Friday passed.
I told Bernie I didn’t think she was going to get back to me. But lo and behold! A text from The Cleaning Lady arrived saying
it looked as if Saturday would be The Day.
Of course I’m not sitting idly by eating bonbons during this
delay (well, actually, I am grabbing Hershey’s miniatures from the tin on the coffee
table almost every time I pass it).
I’m cleaning. With my
left hand, for the most part. If I forget, my right arm above my elbow sends me
a sharp reminder.
Searching for Dust Bunnies
Now, while I may allow my abode to fall into the clutches of
leaf litter tracked in from the garage, and dust bunnies to multiply like- well,
rabbits - and a dried radish slice has
apparently glued itself to the kitchen floor, when I clean, I clean. Bleach is my weapon of choice, applied
liberally in bathrooms and kitchen.
Photos on the wall, baseboards, appliances - anything that can harbor
dust, dirt or microbes gets attention. I
have about an eighth of an acre of hardwood flooring that I either mop on my
hands and knees (yes, ouch! but I have kneepads) or with a very hot steam mop.
And I move all moveable pieces of furniture to clean under them.
Not unusual. But I’m
not the zippy little thing I once was and cleaning is not complete in half a
day. Nor in two days. Or three.
By the third day, housecleaning is no longer good therapy, or even a satisfying
challenge. It is a DREADED MENACE
jeering at me from every remaining uncleaned corner and surface. I grimace and stick my tongue out at it.
Saturday morning came and went, as did Saturday
afternoon. No word from The Cleaning
Lady. I scrubbed and sprayed and polished. My hair became matted. My clothes were filthy, with brown
bleached-out spots on my raggedy black sweat pants.
Monday night at 10:30
I put clean rugs in the bathroom and took the laundered cleaning rags out of
the dryer and put them away, done at last.
So, okay, I guess I needed to do it myself. The mystery remains, however: why did The Cleaning Lady fail to
appear? Was it family problems? Or did I expect too much, such as swiping a
damp paper towel over the floor to determine if it was clean?
Whatever the problem was, I got the house clean by keeping
at it steadily. I think that’s what most things in life require of us: knowing what we need to do and keeping at it
steadily. No nose-wrinkle magic, no fairy godmothers, and no Cleaning Lady.
And you, up there? I
guess you saw that I lacked perseverance.
But thanks for not pulling the rug out from under me all at once. The delays, the gradual letdown – it worked.
Go ahead, keep laughing.
I love it when I make God laugh – by any means.
