Spring cleaning breakdown
We powered through it. The house positively sparkles, and most of the clutter is gone, or at least packed into boxes for the time being. I coughed and hacked my way through the project last week, and then the people came to look at the house on Saturday and it became painfully clear that they were using our house as a cost comparison tool. They stayed maybe 90 seconds and hopped back in their cars, and I successfully fought the urge to bare my ass and raise my tallman fingers in protest as they drove away.
Talk about anticlimactic.
But now that’s done, and things don’t feel quite so overwhelming, the house feels sanitary again, and we can just keep plugging away at the projects and packing without feeling like we’re doing it in grime.
The rest of the weekend was lovely, a bonfire at Cheril & Greg’s.
A dozen teenage boys took to the stage with their electric guitars, drum kit, and bass to regale us with their clunky renditions of the Ramones, Hendrix, Doors, and many others. Black Chucks and jeans—de rigeur.
The adult musicians took over for a little while, and Miss Lila rocked it with the maracas. I had a couple of gin and tonics, then took too many photos on the wrong settings, so it’s all motion blur and funky lights. We stayed until after midnight, and Lila set the pace. Girl is a party animal.
On Sunday we went to Chris’ family reunion at his parents’ house. His brother and sister-in-law came into town from CO with their two gorgeous toddlers, and I got to enjoy an afternoon with a couple of adults I can actually relate to. It’s not fair that we live so far away from one another.
I don’t have permission to post photos of the other kids, but cropped in on Lila playing with her cousin’s reptile of the day.
Huge treat driving up and seeing the Sale Pending sign at the end of our soon-to-be-new driveway. The woman who owns the house came over and introduced herself, then let us take everybody on a tour. So fun seeing the house inside again, and still feeling that great, big, sighing yes.
Mom and Dad offered us the back part of their property to garden on, so I’ll have a place to plant all of those tomato, pepper, and eggplant starts. I wandered around the yard taking pictures of shapes and colors.
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
May 1st, 2006 at 12:54 pm
You know, it’s cray-zee, but I still can’t get myself used to regular updates from Kelly!
Thus I don’t visit nearly often enough.
And anticlimatic, but hey, like you say, you got it done. And thank heaven for that.
I have seen none of the lettuce I’ve planted. Nothing at all. I don’t know from cold frames, though.
May 1st, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Great pictures!
May 4th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Showing your house is such a pain in the ass. Ugh.
I love your photos!