According to the calendar, spring started a month ago, but this being Seattle you can’t always be sure. A hint was when we began waking to the calliope of bird songs these days. No longer did the screech of the alarm clock at oh-dark-hundred hours have us hurtling ourselves out from under the comfy, warm covers.
After all, it’s not quite as cold as it was only weeks ago. Seattle has a particular brand of humid cold that tends to cut right through you.
Once, a couple of winters ago, we ran out of heating oil and the house was incredibly frigid when we finally crawled out from under the blankets. It stayed that way for hours too -- even after the oil truck had refilled our empty tank and the furnace had kicked on.
How cold was it? The house was so cold that morning that I had to use the electric hair blower in order to jump start my old electric typewriter.
But now, the Canada geese are well on their way north, the sprouts have all pushed their way up through the earth in the flower beds and the tree’s buds have unfolded into leaves.
And with the coming of spring, all the general clean-up jobs that we’ve been putting off all winter have finally come up against their due date. The stairs to the basement and the space behind the refrigerator were both vacuumed and all the corners that have been harboring cobwebs and who-knows-what-all have been scoured.
“What’s this thing under here?” the Lady Marjorie called from the next room where she was busily purging dust bunnies.
“I don’t know,” I yelled back. “Is it moving or is it stationary?”
“It’s kinda furry,” came the reply.
“If it eats anything, name it.”
When I shared an apartment at Michigan State with three other guys during my senior year, we had names for all the “monsters” that lived around the place. There was the tub monster, the kitchen sink monster (it would even talk to you when you turned on the garbage disposal) and, probably the most fearsome -- the greasy stove/oven monster.
That spring, just before we moved out, we drew lots to see whose job it was to “kill” each of the various monsters. It took my one unlucky roommate two days and the use of power tools to eventually declare victory over the stove/oven monster.
I was surprised when the tub finally came clean -- I had always thought we just had a green velvet-lined shower. When I started asking around about seasonal cleaning at my usual stop for coffee the other day, I got all sorts of suggestions. One of the most appealing was to simply make sure that you live in a house with a water repellent interior; then you can just walk in and turn a hose loose on the whole thing. Another high-tech type at coffee allowed as how there were five different stages of house cleaning.
The first stage was light dusting, e.g., anything you could handle with a feather duster. Electrical technology provided the second stage; he suggested the use of vacuum cleaners, floor polishers and electrostatic rug beaters. Really dirty houses would require you to move into the third stage and utilize heavy equipment. Bulldozers, steam shovels, pneumatic drills; all of these options may be used at this level.
The fourth stage is gravity cleaning -- you simply open all the doors and windows on one side of the house, jack up the other side and push everything out the open exits.
The ultimate high-tech fifth stage is nuclear atomization. When your house is that dirty, we’re no longer just foolin’ around.
I’m so glad that the warmer weather has again made an appearance. In spite of the housework and the cleaning chores, it’s great to see and feel that golden orb return to the sky for longer periods each day.
Ozzy, the ol’ guy across the street, is still telling me not to expect any long periods of good weather, even with global warming. I’ve lived in Seattle some 35 years now, so I know you can’t really expect good summer weather until after the Fourth of July.
Remember to keep your Gortex close by; it’s still going to come down by the bucket full before we reach the peak of outdoor grilling season.
We just might finally get the domicile cleaned up by then.
[[In-content Ad]]