Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: cleaning


by 29 Comments

Saturday randomness

I was making cornbread for dinner. The kind that has creamed corn and sour cream and butter and eggs and cornbread mix. Talking to my sister who was busy making Brunswick stew, I pour the mixture into the prepared 8×8 pan and pop it into the preheated oven. My work is done. But as we chat and I casually clean up bowls and measuring cups I pick up the cornbread box to toss it into the garbage and realize it’s heavy. Heavy with the cornmeal mix still inside. Which means it’s not in the cornbread that’s in the oven. I quickly haul the pan out of the oven, scrape the creamed corn, sour cream and egg mixture out of the pan, stir in the Jiffy Mix, pour it back into the pan and shove it into the oven.

I’m not telling anyone and I hope you can keep a secret.

I’m vacuuming the house in preparation of visitors coming tomorrow. Working my way across the living room I stop to roll the big long red and blue tunnel to the other side of a carpet runner so I can vacuum up the rolling dog fur hiding underneath. It occurs to me that maybe most people don’t have an agility tunnel permanently affixed in their living room.

I kind of feel sorry for those that don’t.

Penny the sheltie-girl is whining to go out. We figure she has to poo so I hook her up to her leash and my sister and I head out to take her for a walk up the street. She puts her foot down at the end of the driveway and refuses to go further. Apparently she only walks up the road if we’re practicing her heeling, including appropriate treats. I have two dusty pieces of kibble in my pocket and that gets us almost to the next driveway but she’s not going further without rewards. My sister picks her up and we carry her past another driveway to the lawn where she likes to do her business. We begin to laugh, because who carries their dog to a neighbor’s lawn in order to get her to poo? We laugh so hard our stomachs hurt, then my sister puts Penny down and she proceeds to do her stuff, which we promptly bag.

Are you guys laughing at me?

And then we all walk happily home.


by 16 Comments

Ambushed

Ambush: Make a surprise attack from a concealed position.

I’m trying to declutter the house in preparation for the painter. We’ve lived here a long time, and, I guess I haven’t put things away as promptly as I might have.

I thought I’d start with the guest bedroom – how hard could it be to sort through the stuff piled on the dressers in there? I was sure most of it could be tossed.

But under the piles of old sheet music, bad clarinet reeds, the patterns for sweaters I might have wanted to knit once upon a time, the maps of campgrounds and parks I’ve visited, under all that detritus, was a stack of Christmas cards.

I know I keep Christmas cards way too long. They sit in a basket on the kitchen counter until the next holiday season comes along. And then I have to just toss them all at once, I can’t look through them or I won’t be able to heave them into the trash. So why would a stack of Christmas cards be sitting on a dresser in a guest room?

I shouldn’t have looked.

They are from 1997; cards and holiday letters from many people who are long gone. Cards from people who are gone from my life because relationships faded, divorces happened, or they moved and we just lost touch. And an awful lot of them have died, including one of my best friends, my adopted up north grandma, my father-in-law (that’s him in the center), my sister-in-law, and my own parents.

Merry Christmas, circa 1997

So I’ve sorted through the stack, and have saved the very special hellos and happy holidays, the handwritten notes and newsy letters of those that have gone ahead, and tossed the rest into the trash. But, man, being ambushed by so many memories sure took the wind out of my cleaning sails.

And if you’re wondering how the paint decision is going, I went back to Lowe’s and got four more samples this morning.

It’s complicated.

More of the same.