My Questionable Cleaning Style

Kitchen Horror!

My lovely Motel 6 bedroom

I have made a hideous mess of my kitchen while elevating our bedroom to "cleanest ever" status.  
If you are asking yourself what a cake dish and two punch bowls were doing in the bedroom in the first place, you don't know me well.

Last week four of my all-time favorite friends came to visit and the first couple arrived six hours before I expected them.  The sheets were in the dryer and I was at the tail-end of my weekly kombucha bottling session so the kitchen was a wreck, but other than that things weren't as gruesome as they could have been. These were "self-cleaning" guests and after a week of fun - including Indian cooking lessons - they departed, leaving the house cleaner than they found it.  I must mention that the guys prepared all the meals and cleaned up afterward too. I swear, I could soooo love communal living!

Learning in Santhoshi's Kitchen.  Yum.

Guess which guest chef is left-handed?

Maybe depression at their departure inspired the current cleaning binge?

Yesterday I ripped everything out of all the closets, cabinets and drawers of the master bath and bedroom and took everything that didn't belong to the kitchen. It took all day but I knew Jerry was going to work late so I had extra time to get everything straightened back up.  What I forgot to factor in was that Kate was coming over.

"Oh my God, what happened here?" was her entry line.  Things only deteriorated from there.  Before the evening was over, I had emptied drawers and shelves in the kitchen too.  When Jerry got home, he didn't even comment.  He's used to these upheavals and knows that they usually abate on the third day.  It also helped that he could see that the boudoir was Holiday Inn clean.  

Vanilla in its infancy

Today I got up to face the explosion in the kitchen and ended up arranging my spices which led directly to infusing vodka with vanilla beans.  When I was done with that, I whipped up a batch of my homemade deodorant and made laundry soap - all in a kitchen that would have caused social services to remove my child from the home had they had occasion to visit.   (She's twenty-six.  I wonder where they would place her?)  Then, instead of picking it all up, I decided to write this blog.

I am currently taking an online course called:  Focus and Concentration.  I wonder if they have a money-back guarantee?  

www.StillSwimmingUpstream.com

Estimating is a Math Skill

I asked Jerry if he thought I could clean up the kitchen in fifteen minutes.

"No." he said.

Way to show support!  I decided to accept the challenge. I turned the timer on to fifteen minutes to prove him wrong.  It buzzed.  I kept working.  Two and a half hours later, I finally finished.

"How did you know it would take me longer than fifteen minutes?" I asked.

"You seriously underestimated how messy it was."  he replied.

Seriously.

www.StillSwimmingUpstream.com

Time

Yesterday morning, the grands were quietly playing with Jerry's phone and one of them, unbeknownst to any us, stealthily changed the clock to "world time."  Who even knows what that means?

The day turned into night and we all retired for the evening.  When Jerry's alarm rang today, he was groggy but dragged himself out of bed just like every other day.  He threw himself into the shower to help wake up, dressed and then went to the kitchen to get a tea.  (Iced, sweet.)

It was as he was chugging down his pre-dawn caffeine fix that he chanced to glance at the clock on the stove.  At first, he thought the power must have gone out in the night.  He went into the living room, just to check.  It was 3:30.

When it dawned upon him what had happened, he went back to bed.  He struggled to get back to sleep but eventually he drifted off.  He must have finally entered that deep-sleep phase when his alarm rang because he says he didn't even hear it.  He woke up a half-an-hour later than normal and rushed around like a Tasmanian Devil.  He departed the house mere minutes after awakening.  Being "on time" is very important to Jerry and he was on time, even today.  As a matter of fact, he arrived early.

To review, he got up thirty minutes later than usual and was still able to arrive early to work.  To me that would be a green light to sleeping 30 minutes later every day.  To him it's just a good story.  As long as I live, I swear, I will never understand the workings of the male mind.

Africa Hot

I'm trying to figure out how to describe the weather in my new state without sounding whiny. When I first arrived here in mid-May, it was already blazing outside and I told pretty much everyone I knew on the planet (and even a few strangers) how I felt about it. "If it's this hot in May, what will August be like?" I said one too many times. Turns out that this line of thought was irritating my husband more than a sore tooth. I had to stop.

I decided upon the phrase "Africa hot." It's descriptive and yet not offensive. I liked how it sounded when I said it, kind of perky and cute, a cheerleader of description. It also had the added plus of not annoying hubby. That in itself is reason enough to adopt it, so I did.

Yesterday, I was standing in my kitchen and a tear rolled down my cheek. Only I wasn't crying - it was sweat. And, I did mention that I was inside, didn't I?

Perhaps Africa hot is not accurate enough. From now on, maybe I'll just say I live east of Hell.