Smoke: Wildfire smoke rolled in thick and hung in the air for Monday and Tuesday this week, forcing us indoors for cross country practice and cloaking our skies in gray gloom. Gloomy days make me somewhat existential, apparently: When I was done cooking on Monday, I sat down and thought about the ridiculous amount of time that I spend planning, purchasing, and prepping food. At least a third, if not more, of my existence revolves around this menial but necessary task. And my active teenage and preteen kids have begun eating SO MUCH! Some days it feels like all I do is plan and prepare for the next meal/feeding frenzy.
After dinner on Monday night, we had family game night. Jay suggested a dance party to the song "Narwhals Are Awesome," so we said yes. He turned it on our Alexa speaker and all 3 kids danced and pranced in a hilarious interpretive way to that quirky hilarious song (think arms on foreheads to create a narwhal horn). Then Amber did a dance solo in roller skates on the carpet to the song "Particle Man" (it's a real song--also quirky). She even did the same moonwalking-ish move during the chorus every time! It was adorable and hilarious. After that, Rose wanted to pick a song, so she turned on We Don't Talk About Bruno and she and Amber did an interesting interpretive duo dance to that. After the dancing, we played some lazy guess the animal wherein we gave the girls lots of turns and the lazy/tired parents and Jay one turn each.
Tuesday was much of the same, mostly spent hiding from the smoke. I led our cross country team in 20 minutes of core-intensive yoga, and it was a challenge speaking loud enough for 40 talkative kids to hear me in the large echo-y gym. But I managed it and then the team ran laps around the high school's two story building for half an hour. Indoor practice can get quite monotonous! The smoke finally blew away on Wednesday, so life returned to normal.
Spray: This topic is best described by an excerpt from my journal.
Thursday, September 15th: It all started before 7am today when Amber dropped a cup full of orange juice which splattered and sprayed all over the kitchen table, chair, floor, and other nearby surfaces. She did her best to wipe it up and to her seven year old credit, she managed to wipe up a good amount of the juice. But there were sticky residue and drips in the most unexpected places. I wasn't in the room to see her drop the cup, so my first two attempts at cleaning up the rest of the spill were insufficient, even with liberal amounts of all-purpose cleaning spray. By the time we finished family scripture and prayer at 7:10am, I was resigned to mopping the entire kitchen. I can deal with crumbs and smudges, but I cannot stand sticky surfaces in my house!
I had Jeff and Jay move the kitchen table into the family room before they left for school, so I had an unobstructed kitchen floor to scrub. What a treat, I thought wryly to myself. Thank you for moving that table so I can do even more intense cleaning. I could have moved the table myself, sure, but I felt the need to have my family participate at least a tiny bit in this cleanup process.
Once Amber had caught the school bus, I began. First, I had to sweep the kitchen floor. Easy. Quick. Done. When I got out the mop and bucket, however, I realized that in order to fill the bucket in the sink, I first needed to wash the mixing bowl that was in the sink, and if I was going to wash the mixing bowl, I may as well wash the nearby dirty muffin tins and skillet as well. A freshly mopped kitchen wouldn't seem very fresh and clean if it was coated in dirty dishes. Plus, I wanted to wipe all of the counters so the crumbs wouldn't be blown belatedly below and besmirch my beautifully mopped floor.
So, I washed the dishes and wiped the counters, then filled the mop bucket with water, two squirts of dish soap, and a shot of white vinegar. After a few swipes of the mop, I saw a patch of grime that required extra effort to pry off the floor, so I used a butter knife to scrape it off. While I was down on the floor scraping, I glanced over and noticed that the two kitchen windowsills had become veritable housefly graveyards. So I cleaned that up with some paper towels.
After I had wiped the windowsills, I noticed that the window itself was splattered and filthy. So I went and found the Windex. The bottle was empty, so I unscrewed the lid (with great difficulty) and refilled it. Then I sprayed the front kitchen window and began wiping it down.
There was a strange cloudy splatter pattern all over the upper half of the window--it looked like paint maybe--which had been there ever since we moved in. I had always assumed it wouldn't come off because it didn't come off with Windex and a paper towel, but when I scratched it with my fingernail today, it came off! So I tried using the mop on the window. It didn't work. I re-sprayed it with Windex and and tried another paper towel. No luck. Finally, I used the rough side of our blue kitchen sponge and worked up a sweat scrubbing that huge window for over 10 minutes before it was finally clear of the splatters. Then I Windex'd it again and it was almost clean...I went outside and scrubbed the other side of the window and it was finally sparkling clean.
While I was outside cleaning the window, I noticed our charcoal grill sitting on the front porch--it had been there ever since the fourth of July. I vowed to drag it back to the garage once I finished my original task: mopping the kitchen.
By this time, my bucket of mop water was probably cold, but I returned to it anyways and continued mopping my kitchen's 80 square foot patch of linoleum. It was soon finished. From there I went to the bathroom and couldn't resist cleaning the toilet and sink. I was on a roll!
Remembering my vow to put away the grill, I went outside and hoisted/dragged/hefted the not-heavy-but-awkward little grill around the side of the house and down to the garage. While I was in the garage, two old cobwebby dusty unused baby car seats caught my eye. I lugged them over to the trash can and disposed of them. Then I went to the basement and dug out our autumn leaf garland and strand of lights, which I hung around our family room windows.
By then, the kitchen floor was dry, so I dragged the table back into the kitchen. At some point I also sorted Amber's clothes and threw away all of the grungiest and too small items. Total elapsed cleaning time was close to three hours, and all I set out to do was mop our little kitchen.
I did all of that cleaning but the house still needs so much more. It never ends. I'm trying to be satisfied with what I did accomplish today rather than remember all of the other chores that are always waiting in the wings.
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