Where was I? Oh yeah, The Aftermath!

Got up early Thursday and having packed the night before, went down and strapped the kids down and dropped off the keys at the office (and told them about the leaky ceiling) and headed north. Again, the trip was blessedly uneventful except for the previously mentioned run-ins with highly skilled drivers. Got home a little before 2, checked to make sure all of our piles of junk had not been touched by burglars, went outside and to make sure the torrential downpours had not washed anything away, unloaded luggage, started doing laundry, went looking for a decoration for Oldest’s bedroom, and…went out to eat!

Nothing in the fridge, no inclination to set in to cook, so while we were out decoration shopping, we stopped by the most famous Olive Garden in the world, the one over in the Eastwood Mall area of Birmingham which was once the setting for an article by semi-famed cricket writer, sucker-up of Guardian expense account funds, and upper class pretender Matthew Engel; said article later in turn soundly fisked by James Lileks. Anyway, not my most favorite Italian place, but it was right there and it does have a kid’s menu. While I was gone on vacation, East Carolina reader Jim Smith wrote in to ask that I mention if I got to eat any seafood with pasta while I was away. I did, but not until I got back home—shrimp alfredo, which was reasonably good and quite artery-clogging. Again, O.G. ain’t really my idea of a good seafood place, but I was still in the mood for fishiness.

Finished up, went home, did more laundry, got up the next morning and in a fit of obsessive-compulsiveness, decided I wanted our shower cleaned. Completely. We have hard water, so a nice crusty film of calcium forms on the shower after approximately five seconds, and I have fought the stuff for five years now. I tried everything—Scrubbing Bubbles, Ka-Boom, Clorox—all of them did get it cleaner, but the foggy film was just too tough. I even tried the diluted CLR spray for bathrooms, which didn’t put a dent in it. Time for the heavy firepower—in a bold gamble I know Acidman would heartily approve of, I started dousing the walls and glass with just plain old straight CLR. I’m not sure of the exact pH of it, but it sure ‘nuff acidic enough to do the job since it contains not one, not two, but THREE different acids: glycolic, sulfamic acid and citric. The task did, however, require A WHOLE BOTTLE! And lots of scrubbing. BUT, once I got through three hours later, our shower was cleaner and sparklier than when we first moved in. I felt so…so…woozy and light-headed. And the small cut on my finger was very painful. But what a feeling of domestic pride!

Then it was time to use the shower and get it all scummy again in order to get cleaned up to go over to my Mom’s house for the Fourth. My sister had come up from Mobile (about an hour ahead of us on Thursday) so it was a nice family gathering. Again, no one was in a mood to cook, so my mom picked up some barbecue and some chicken from Full Moon. I usually wax rhapsodic about Dreamland or Jim and Nick’s, but Full Moon is another great pig place, and they have a hot horseradish chow chow that is really something. (The smoked chicken was just as good as the pork, too.) Good time and got to blabber for a pretty good while before the children decided to start acting like berserkers. Home again, clean some more, to bed, then it was time for the Mother of All Saturdays.

Our bedroom continues to look like a dump, and Reba in her own fit of obsessive-compulsiveness decided that It Must Be Cleaned. However, Reba is not good at this—she gets in the middle of stuff and finds something interesting to read or something to put up in another room, which leads her to wander off and wind up at bedtime with an even bigger mess, most of which will be strewn over my side of the bed. Alternately, she will say I need to help, and then rather than letting me get something done, I wind up waiting for her to give me bits of string to throw away and safety pins to put in the safety pin cup. Again, such a procedure virtually guarantees nothing ever really gets done.

SO, after her gentle entreaty to help her clean up, bright and early Saturday, she said, “Okay, where do you want to start?” Much like questions about whether certain pants make certain butts look big, there was no right answer to this, but in a bold stroke I said, “You start on your side of the room, I’ll start on mine, and we’ll meet in the middle.” I could tell this wasn’t really what she wanted to do—she always seems to think the big mess in the room is the result of me (which IS partially true, I will admit)—so she always wants to get over into my stuff and start rummaging around. She just never really wants to work on her stuff. But, given the confidence I expressed in my plan, she just sighed sadly and went to work.

I managed to throw away four big black garbage bags full of stuff (as the child of parents who grew up during the Great Depression, I have a visceral aversion to throwing ANYTHING away, even if it’s old ticket stubs or bent paper clips), clean the old Admiral console radio off, stow all my loose books, dust my bookcase, get rid of two big boxes of junk that had been in place since we moved, find two different copies of the newsletter I wrote a few years back for all of the folks who quit my old employer (in re-reading these, I see that the editorial tone of Possumblog has a very clear ancestor), vacuum the floor, and after a hard day’s work generally make a remarkable difference in reducing the level of junkiness. ON THE OTHER HAND, poor Reba didn’t make much headway, other than to stack a huge pile of stuff over on my side of the bed. Which means her side of the room will be my next project. ::sigh::

I paid for all my effort Sunday, when I could barely get around without grabbing my back and making old man noises, but hey, my side of the room’s clean.

Anyway, thus ends my Summer Vacation. Now then, on to more important matters!
posted by Terry at 9:48:00 AM