2-11-08

Remember how, months ago, I decided that I’d clean the entire house every Saturday, and then I’d have a clean house at least ONE day a week, and then I did that for two – maybe three – weeks, and then I was all “Fuck this. Cleaning house is for the birds!”, and then my house became a mess and I’d run the vacuum every once in a while and dust when there were three inches of dust on all horizontal surfaces, and let the Roomba do most of the vacuuming, and called it good enough?

Well, I got so sick of what a mess the house was that on Saturday I spent hours cleaning the entire house and doing laundry, and for one shiny, sparkling day I had a clean house.

It was nice while it lasted.

I scrubbed out litter boxes (though they didn’t really need it), and I cleaned out the Cat-It, and I vacuumed the entire house with the Dyson, and moved everything in the kitchen and cleaned behind and under everything, and scrubbed the bathrooms. In fact, I think I have about 50 cleaning rags in the house, and I used every damn one of them. Which, I mean, don’t be too impressed, I am liberal with the usage of cleaning rags. But still, by the end of the day I had a clean house and a washer full of dirty cleaning rags, and all the laundry was done.

It was nice, is what I’m saying.

What was even nicer is that it was warmish and sunny out on Saturday, so I did laundry and hung everything out to dry, and got to fold and put away laundry that smelled like sunshine, and then I did more laundry on Sunday (sheets and the laundry left over from Saturday) and it dried nicely in the sun and the 50-degree weather with a medium wind.

I love weekends like that.

I even got out the upholstery attachment and went around and vacuumed all the cat hair off the couches and the recliners, and then I pulled the couches out and vacuumed behind and under them, and then I switched them around because we’ve been using the same couch for almost a year (the other couch only gets used by humans when we have guests; otherwise, it belongs to the cats).

The only thing I didn’t do that I wish I had was go around and clean the inside of the windows. I JUST cleaned the friggin’ things, what? November? But every window is covered with cat paw prints and cat nose prints, and some of them have cat spit on them, because sometimes they need to be licked. I don’t know what that’s about, and I don’t want to ask the cats.

Maybe I’ll get that next weekend. Maybe not. We’ll see!

 

We watched Across the Universe on Friday night, and eh. The songs were good, and I learned that there are a LOT of Beatles songs I’ve never heard before, but the movie itself was not anything I desire to ever see again. I’ve liked Evan Rachel Wood since she was Jessie Sammler on Once and Again, but these days I mostly think she looks like she needs a good hard smack.

I did download some of the soundtrack from iTunes, though. That version of Let It Be gives me chills.

Maybe we would have enjoyed the movie more if we hadn’t stopped it halfway through to run to the pharmacy to pick up TamiFlu for Fred, and then went to 0ffice D3pot to look at computers, then came home to watch the rest of the movie so we could send it back to Netflix.

Probably not, though.

Saturday we made it up to ourselves by watching some good quality entertainment, a movie I’ve seen three times now, and which Fred has seen four. We just need to give it up and buy the damn movie already, so we don’t have to record it when it’s on or keep renting it.

I speak, obviously, of She’s the Man. That Amanda Bynes, she just cracks me up. One of my favorite parts is the scene when she’s eating and shooting dirty looks at Olivia, and the lady running the meeting (for the debutante ball) leans over and says “Remember, eat like you have a secret”, and she does this FACE that cracks me the hell up every time. I had to go back and watch it like five times, I love it so much.

Not this face, but one she makes just a few seconds later:

(pic)

That Amanda Bynes, what a cutie.

 

I was sitting at my computer Sunday afternoon when something caught my eye, and I glanced over to see our next door neighbor’s (grown) son tromping through the garden. I picked up the cell phone and called Fred, who was working in the chicken yard.

“What the fuck?” I said.

“What?”

“What’s fucko doing tromping through our garden?” I asked.

“I don’t rightly know,” Fred said. We watched as fucko stopped, picked something up, and went back to his own property.

Keep in mind, there’s nothing growing in our garden, so it wasn’t like he was doing any damage, but STILL.

Over the course of the afternoon, he tromped through the garden at least five more times, and I finally realized he was hitting a tennis ball around, and it kept going into our garden (and in the shrubbery separating their property from the neighbor on the other side sometimes, too).

“Is he high?” I asked Fred.

“That or very bored,” he said.

The day before, we’d noticed a tractor clearing brush from between our property and the property touching ours on the back forty section of our land. And then it started clearing brush ON our land.

“Um,” I said to Fred. “Should we say something to him?” “We” meaning “Fred”, of course.

“I guess I better,” Fred said, and headed in that direction.

Turns out the guy’d been hired by the granddaughter of the woman who owns that land to clear the brush because they were going to put up a new fence (they have horses), and when she explained it to the guy, he misunderstood and thought that our back forty belonged to them as well.

OH HELLZ NAW.

Good thing Fred caught him when he did – he was planning to go all along the property line and clear all the brush. The brush that we LIKE having, because it gives us some semblance of privacy.

I’m starting to think that 4 1/2 acres is not nearly enough. I’m wishing we had, like, 200 acres, and the house was directly in the middle of it. Is that too much to wish for?

 

Apparently atop the air conditioning unit is quite the hopping social scene.

 

Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: Why she felt the need to ostentatiously walk up and down the property line so many times instead of just coming over and talking to Fred, I have no idea.
2004: Interesting how that works, no?
2002: Woulda made a good picture.
2001: No entry.
2000: Have you ever noticed that if you read or say the same word over and over, it ceases to make any kind of sense?