Clever Escape

I don’t know how all you people do at keeping your houses clean, since I can’t really see you or your houses through the internet (wouldn’t it be cool to spy on that too? instead of just each others blogs? Go in and check out other people’s houses too? Hmm. Kind of creepy, but interesting all the same…).

My housekeeping comes in waves. The clean waves are usually much shorter than the messy waves. And most of it revolves around the time of year.

For instance, I usually start out the beginning of the school year with a pretty clean house that was the result of a summer of absolute boredom. Then I get super busy and cleaning my home is the first thing that goes.

By the end of the school year, I am barely at home for sleeping much less cleaning. So my house is total chaos.

Then everything in between is the clean-messy-clean-messy waves that last days, weeks or months, depending on, well, I suppose my level of laziness or business at work. And whether we are having anyone over. And how motivated I can get my husband. But that usually doesn’t work.

Give me a couple of weeks in the summer, though, and it is pristine. Not only does it take me less than two weeks of not working to drive me nutso with boredom (after being so ridiculously busy during the end of the year) but I am at home, looking at the mess, all the time.

Thus far this summer I have cleaned up and out most of the apartment. The outside parts anyhow. Haven’t really gotten into cupboards and drawers…oh wait I completely emptied, cleaned, and reorganized the pantry the other day. Guess I have started the insides.

Yesterday I decided to clean my sink.

Turns out, it was much, much dirtier than I had first thought.

Cleaning my sink:

• Emptied it all, washed the dishes, ran the dishwasher
• Filled up each side with hot, hot water and bleach
• Left for a long time, like an hour or something
• Water was still ridiculously hot, and it was bleach water, so I used tongs to take the stoppers out
• Broke out the Barkeeper’s Friend and scrubbed the bitch till it shined
• Wasn’t shiny enough so I rinsed it all off and wiped it down with Windex

Damn if that thing doesn’t practically glow. My husband got home and was messing around in the kitchen and I just stood there, looking at him, waiting for him to notice the new light that we had in our kitchen.

He didn’t.

The man is distracted by any shiny object in five miles of him, but he doesn’t notice the new reflectant light source in our kitchen?

WTF.

Anyhow, he was like, yep, that’s shiny all right.

And went on with life.

Not nearly as excited as me.

Well, I like my shiny sink and it is going to stay that way. Shiny and empty. He tried to put a spoon in it this morning and I stood there until he moved it the two feet required to place it into the dishwasher.

He ran water into the sink (gasp!) and I had to wipe it all out with a towel so it wouldn’t get water spots.

I have the feeling that I am going to be going through lots of towels because of this sink.

I looked at the sink in our new apartment, and it needs some more shininess.

Task number one, when we move in…clean the sink.

And this is what summers off get me. An obsession with my sink being shiny. I think I need a new hobby.

I just went through and updated the syllabus for each of my classes.

And I worked a little on my school website.

It is still June.

Someone stop me.

Tomorrow we are leaving to go camping for our anniversary. Which means that today I get to get all the camping stuff out and go grocery shopping and make sure we have everything. Since my husband is *conveniently* sleeping.

Yes, I know he works nights and he is always sleeping right now. But still.

AND I need to clean the house because I know I’m not going to want to when we get back, and Sunshine is flying in for the summer next week.

I’m actually really excited about camping - we haven’t done anything like that for a long time. As in, anything not here. Not in the valley. And now is the perfect time to go since it has been over 110 for the past I don’t even know how long. Two weeks? And at least all of this week, and probably next week?

I don’t think I am into writing right now. Writer’s block or something. I know I have things to say, they just aren’t coming to me right now.

Maybe later.

Otherwise, we won’t be back from camping until Saturday!

Do you know the easiest way to tell a recent transplant to Arizona apart from those who were born and raised here? Look outside at 2 in the afternoon. All the recent transplants, thinking that it looks so beautiful and nice outside, rush out to the pool to “enjoy” the day.

Silly people.

Anyone who has been here for any length of time knows that the one time of day you do not go outside is at 2 in the afternoon. The sun is high and hot, the parking lots are steaming, the air is heavy and still…unless you are running to another air conditioned environment, it is the absolute worst time to venture out of doors here.

I currently live in an apartment complex. With my summers off and gas prices being ridiculous, I have to find ways to amuse myself at home, and I have been doing that by running outside and across the breezeway where I have a view of the pool to count heads.

We have a lot of silly people living here. Sometimes they even classify as stupid.

For instance, the ones that bring their children - their small children - out to the pool at any time between eleven and four.

And I don’t see any bottles of sunscreen out there with them.

Not to say they don’t have any on, but don’t they know your supposed to reapply it every hour or so? I really doubt they are doing that. Stepping outside and having the sun barely brush my skin at that time of day turns me brown (lucky me took after my dad on that one - my mom would burn and blister immediately). I can’t imagine what it is doing to those kid’s skin.

And it is 114 degrees outside! Pool or no pool, that is hot!

At least they are learning. Over the past couple of days people have been slowly disappearing from the pool, arriving earlier in the day and leaving more quickly than they were. Numbers are dwindling. Still, when I go out after my run at like seven in the morning to jump in for a quick swim, there is rarely anyone else out there. This morning there was a father and daughter out there. They were cute. Apparently he was skipping work to take her swimming because she kept asking him if he was late and he kept telling her yes, then they would keep swimming…lol.

So maybe he learned faster than everybody else, because yes, the hours between eleven and four are the hottest part of the day. Swim before or after that.

Yes, the brick sidewalks will burn your feet.

Yes, the sun will burn all exposed skin, and sometimes even covered skin, in seconds.

And yes, it is still hot even though you are in the pool.

Just wait until the end of July when the pool feels like bathwater. I wonder what they will think of that!

Have you ever thought about how fabulous breathing is? How good it feels to fill your lungs with air, and then slowly let it out again?

I love breathing (lol). It just feels good to sit and feel the air going in, filling up my lungs, then slowly flowing back out again.

It is not easy to concentrate on breathing. Conveniently, it is one of those things you don’t have to think about doing, it just happens. Thank goodness or I would have issues staying alive, since I tend to get distracted easily. But when you do just sit there, feeling your lungs filling and then emptying them, feeling everything going in and out, it is refreshing and helps me to focus.

My husband will probably read this and laugh cause he says this is something that Sunshine would say. One of those things that children wonder about. He says that to me a lot lately.

For instance, the other day we were in the pool and I commented how cool water feels. If you stand completely still in still water, you don’t really know that you are under water. Except that, you know, you are wet. Then you move and it all ripples around you. Wiggle your fingers and it flows right through. You can float on it, or suspend yourself in it. You can pick your feet up and not worry about falling. Push it around and you move. It is pretty cool!

I like to float on my back in the pool and watch the birds flying around. There is a pair of hawks that fly around above our apartment complex. It is very relaxing to watch them gliding along through the sky.

If all this makes me like a child, oh well! I like thinking about these things. I like to wonder at the things around me, things that I would normally take for granted during the course of my day. I think it is part of truly enjoying life. Take a second and just feel what is going on around you. The sights, sounds and smells of the world. What things feel like.

When we grow up, I think we lose the sense of wonder that the world brings to us. We take it for granted. We are told, whether directly or by example, that grown-ups don’t think about things like that anymore. That a sense of having already “been there, done that” is part of being mature and experienced, and that is important to be mature and experienced. Yet so many people let life and time pass them by while they concentrate on working and doing what society expects them to do, valuing what they are expected to value, believing what they are expected to believe.

What a waste of the one thing we can never beg, borrow or steal - Time.