s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Spring Cleaning took a turn for the gross. Since we moved my big desk into the living room to be the communal Net machine, we’ve been planning to turn my old office into a sewing/garb room. It’s got the gorgeous old Sezchuan cabinet I bought myself, with all my boxes of jewelry and junk on top, the two bookcases of reference books, and then just a bunch of bins of fabric and assorted crap that we’ve been tidying out of the other rooms in the house.

Here are the only data points you really need:

1) Because it’s full of crap, we don’t go in there very often.
2) Azami sometimes takes her birds in there to play with.
3) See number 1.

Ugh.

And ew.

And did I mention ew ?

Today, it became necessary to CLEAN. I was starting to get that Living In a Festering Puddle Of Our Own Filth kind of feeling. I’ve swept and mopped the downstairs — which consists of the dance studio and the foyer. Since the weekly SCA A&S is planning to do some dance practice in the studio this week, this seemed like a good idea. I vacuumed the stairs (instead of just taking the broom to them). If I had my druthers, I’d have wooden stairs, so the broom would always be the appropriate tool for this. As is it, the fabuloso upright vacuum that we got to deal with the cat hair (a duty it handles with aplomb) is too large for the stairs, and the little canister-and-wand jobbie that Traysi gifted me when I first got my apartment in town is getting a bit low on the suckage in its twilight years. I’ve done two loads of laundry, including half of the guest bedding (also a necessity, since the SCA Flophouse will be hosting Oskar (and his arbalest ! Ooooh !) from Over the Hill next weekend. Must now vaccuum upstairs and do something about the mail-o-lanche where our table used to be.

The sun and the northerly today mean that the floors and the laundry are both drying damn near instantly. The only trick being that since the first load was whites, which is mostly socks and undies, we ran out of clothespins, so the wind has been tossing Stephen’s holey socks all over the sideyard. Luckily, they dry just as well festooned over foxglove and flax as they do over the line.

Heard the first cicadas today, and New Zealand’s Largest Mob of Starlings — their nesting season apparently done — is starting to regroup in little streams and rivulets in the neighbor’s gum trees. Yesterday, I picked my way through the thicket of gorse, mahoe, and supplejack that Stephen has exposed in the bush block in Gallop to confirm that, yes, that *is* a tree fuscia in there, with two trunks a good five inches in diameter, festooned with silvereyes, and blooming.

Yay !