My idea of fun

One of my favorite things to do is clean. One requirement, though, is a nice rainy day to keep me inside. That’s what we had on Friday. I took the day off to make a four day weekend, and it showered off and on all day. Perfect.

The kitchen cabinet over the stove was the first target. Here could be found all manner of age old spices from the mysterious East, misshapen candles that we keep “just in case”, the first cell phone we ever had, everything you need for a birthday celebration (candles for the cake, rolls of stained old crepe paper streamers, and those banners of connected letters spelling out ‘H-A-P-P-Y-B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y’. You would also see a collection of University phone directories for each of the twenty years I’ve worked at the school. To be fair, though, half of them were in the basement (my second target of the day).

The spices went in to a box for Kathy to sort through. I only kept the cinnamon. I knew what that was for, and since I’m the only one that eats it, I instinctively knew it had to be saved. I pitched the directories, keeping only the current one. The cell phone, some really sad candles and one of the two Clabber Girl baking powder cans went into the trash. It was hard, though. I really like the labels on those cans.

Later, when Kathy got home from work, she looked in the spice box, plucked a few out to look at them and said, “It can all go.” We don’t really use seasoning salt or bay leaves or parsley or sage or rosemary or thyme, for that matter.

Next, the basement. Every time I walk down there I wonder why we keep all this stuff. I filled three garbage bags with all sorts of knick knacks, papers and unidentified flotsam. Yes, jetsam too. One of the kids had already gone through his own stuff and cleared out a lot, so I didn’t touch that. He has no where to keep it except here, so that’s OK.

I’d love to have a normal basement and get rid of some of the old furniture down there, but the darn thing is liable to flood in a heavy downpour, and you just never know when it might happen. The old furniture just serves as a place to keep the things we want to stay dry off the floor. I cleared a place for all of Max’s toys. I think the high chair, the old car seat and some of the toys could go to Birthright or someplace.

Mostly I amused myself by wandering from room to room, rearranging things in my mind, opening boxes and gleefully tossing things into garbage bags, listening to suitably subdued music from Joni Mitchell and Carrie Newcomer.

Kathy was pleased with my work in the kitchen, though she had a strange smile on her face when she saw what I had done. Finally she asked me if that cleaning that one cabinet was the sum total of my work all day. She never goes into the basement and doesn’t really care what’s down there, so she wasn’t all that impressed with my three bags full.

Then today was outside day, bright and sunny, great for trimming bushes, cutting the grass and then plopping down on the deck to continue reading Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Mermaid Chair.”

Yup. It’s shaping up to be a perfect weekend.