Hi Mom and Family,
Yesterday I made some progress on the cleaning of the front rooms of the house. I set my alarm for 4:30 AM this morning, so I could clean the area around the Ben Franklin before Dale Sr. would wake and want to build a fire in it. Also yesterday, I met with my computer tutor, went to the dump to get rid of a few month's worth of non-recyclable-non-perishables, and bought a Cristmas tree at Home Depot.
Each time I do some of the cleaning it's the same with me. I have to fight with my lazy self to get myself to start the cleaning, but once I get started it's not so bad. Among other things, I found five or six baking ingredients on the top shelf in the kitchen which were far, far past their sell-by date. I took ten or so of Dale Sr.'s caps outside and hit them against each other to get the accumulated dust off of them (he did not want to throw away any of them). I took about twenty books I didn't want to keep, and they are in the trunk of my car so that I can donate them to the library sale.
Every horizontal surface, such as the top edge of all of the picture frames, had (or still has) a layer of dust on it. And with the ones near the kitchen, it's greasy dust.
I took down all of the glasses from the top shelf in the kitchen, put new newspaper down on the shelf, and put them all back, washed. (It's been almost a year since that was done, before that party we had right after Christmas last year, during that terrible time right after you broke your hip.)
The house is still several hours away from being clean enough to want to put up the tree or any decorations, but at least I'm doing it. Like Daddy did, I love having the tree up, and I get sentimental just looking at it.
It was good to meet with my computer tutor, though I hadn't really prepared anything I wanted to work on. We mostly practiced transferring photos from e-mail. If I'd studied the notes I'd made from my last lesson, I wouldn't have needed the practice. I'd drawn a map of how to get to my house, and I gave it to him to scan for me.
There are two, one says "Grace's" and the other one says "our place".
I'd put off going to the dump for so long, but it was relatively quick and easy. People who bring household trash to the dump are allowed to put it into these huge containers near the entrance, so you don't have to drive way up on the mountain and back up between the arriving and leaving garbage trucks. (Many people put large items in the containers, though it clearly says not to, so they won't have to take the trouble to drive up the mountain, which looks like dirt but I think is made of broken down trash and garbage of former years). I also threw away three old roller-bags with broken zippers. I put them in the containers as they were smaller than the average garbage bag.
Then I drove to Home Depot, and got a tree for around $40, some kind of fir I'd never heard of. I thought that having the tree might make it easier to motivate myself to keep cleaning. (It's still on the patio.)
This pleasant guy (shown here tying a tree to a customer's roof rack) cut off about a foot of the base of the tree I bought, so it would fit in my trunk. He then put it in a machine which swiftly wrapped it up with orange plastic netting. He had the sort of expansive, amusing personality which made the transaction fun.
When I got home, Dale had some soup on the stove. The base of the soup was some of the rich broth he'd made after Thanksgiving (ten pints of it)from the carcasses of the smoked turkeys. The soup was thick with veggies, small chunks of turkey, and egg noodles, really nice on a chilly day.
Last night, the freeze warnings were off. I'd left the sheet covers on the plants because the predicted low was only a few degrees above freezing, and here in the outlying areas it can sometimes go lower.
The main reason for the push to clean the house is that I don't feel I can put up the tree in a dirty house, and it would be depressing to me not to have a Christmas tree.
Love,
Lennie
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