Nefarious Secret

Today was one of the days that I booked off and actually plan to take. I was on the fence about it until I woke up and realized that I needed to elevate my cleaning game. I got showered up and got into it. I started off by putting some laundry in and cleaning the basement powder room. I came upstairs and swept the main floor up. The kitchen and living room were fairly clean, at least the main aspects. I still ran a duster over most things on the main floor though. I ducked at around this point and got myself a late McBreakfast that I ate consipicously as all hell outside of the hair place. I proceeded in when I knew there wasn’t going to be a wait and instantly got my shaggy locks trimmed up for the first time since before leaving for Christmas. They were becoming problematic and I am was seeing numbers rise locally and feared we could be thrust into a more restrictive condition any day so wanted to strike the hot iron. With that done I returned to the Harbour just in time to change loads. Then I grabbed a magic eraser to clean up the banister going upstairs, something I’ve never done in 8 years. It was quite the transformation. I felt the eraser had more life so started to work on the myriad of scuff marks on the walls. I’ve never really looked I guess but holy moly is there a lot of them. I don’t know where they came from or how I have so many. I’m not often carrying anything but myself up the stairs so this is a mystery to me. Equally mysterious was how well the magic eraser worked. Mr Clean just added a layer of mystery to his already shady backstory. I decided to do this test on the small area on the left at the top of the stairs. What an amazing transformation. The picture does nothing to convey the clean look.

When the magic eraser had dissolved to nothing essentially I set about doing the vacuuming. The last major piece of the cleaning puzzle. This would man that all bathrooms and floors were serviced. I fired it up and she screamed. I do not know what the issue is but I know there is one. Everyone says belt immediately but I’m not convinced. This thing sounds like a train horn. I took a short video and shared it around, I’ve embedded it here too for no good reason.

I went pretty quickly through the whole house to get this done as fast as possible. It was around eleven when I started into this task so I assumed most people would be awake by that point. It was tough. Afterwards I emptied all the garbages and took the bag on the deck with the vacuum and tried to clean it up. There was a solid breeze going so I clapped out all the filters and started to check how I could open up the engine portion to see what was happening in there. I found a foam filter I’d never seen before. Oops. I cleaned it well and started the unit up, sounded much better. When I put the tray and filter back in, back to the train horn. So I guess I’ll have to just get a Dyson. That’s the only solution here. I actually dread vacuuming for the only reason that I hate unwinding and winding the cord up and managing it while I work. I think I’d get a cordless one. I’ll start the slow selection process and make a move in the future, I’ve got weeks of clean rugs ahead of me to decide. With trash out, the floors cleaned I’d gotten through the dire components of the project. I next took a little paint touchup product I got for the guest bedroom and used it on the now clean upstairs banister. I covered up a number of little nicks whose origin are a mystery still. While that was drying I got the laundry folded and stowed. Now I was onto the detail work. I dusted some blinds, fluffed pillows and got wild with Febreze. I did the blanket on the basement couch which was smelling a bit dingy these past weeks. I dusted quickly down there too, just a touchup from my efforts a couple weeks back. I cleaned up my office and dusted the upstairs rooms. The house was basically clean at this point, other than the rest of the walls and trim needing attention. To celebrate I had lunch, Cambell’s vegetable soup, the one I ate everyday in high school and the last two pizza buns. I cleaned up and admired my efforts, pretty strong day off. I had a call at half two that I wanted to be on so I brought my iPad downstairs and fired up FS19. I played into one addiction while listening to another. It was a good thing I did call in as I was recognized along with pretty much everyone else as demonstrating the company’s LIFE goals. The I stands for Integrity, I got two shout-outs for that. About the time the call wrapped up is about the time when my nefarious secret I hinted at yesterday came into being. I was having a house guest. My friend She had lost a friend earlier in the week and was planning to come down to send them off. She told me she was going to attend the visitation. It’s now done as a few people moving through at a time and greeting the family before conveying last wishes. She mentioned she was going to drive down and back in the same day and I offered that she could sleep here for the night, assuming she was virus free and was safe while here. She agreed and arrived late afternoon to quickly change and drop her things before heading to the visitation. I just kept on going on FS19. I wasn’t sure what was happening for supper or how long she’d be so I didn’t eat anything. She met up with some of her craft beer friends after apparently for one beer. It was close to nine when she returned and started to work on a short paper she had to complete before midnight. She hadn’t eaten either. It was too late to do anything about it at this point. I just kept on going on FS19. We sat apart and had some broken conversation. I wasn’t my normal self I was noticing. Some of the email traffic I should have ignored in the afternoon had planted a seed of dread in me and I could feel it blooming into waves of shame and anxiety. I won’t get into the detail but it was a serious distraction. I powered down at half ten and we retired to our rooms. I found out later she worked until after midnight then played her Animal Crossing until late into the night. I was asleep by eleven and slept like a corpse, which was a relief.