it's been a quiet week here in lake woebe-portland...
i've been feeling no less bitchy but very motivated lately. i think it's the rain. even scholle remarked on it, "thank you, supernanny! ... you really got a lot done today, even for YOU..." which is true because i showed up with pruners in hand on tuesday to cut back the kiwi vines. they have a tendency to take over the corner where the gate is to get into the back yard. the bike and i were fighting it on monday, then i wised up and -- though a machete wouldn't have been a bad idea -- grabbed the clippers on the way out the door so i could get in. then the baby and i did some serious vaccuuming and mopping, because he's on the floor so much of the time that clean floors are our priority. anything else we accomplish is gravy. we did the floors, some laundry, the kitchen, and scrubbed out the tub and vaccuumed the stairs before the day was over. i think it's the rain. i was feeling so parched and unmotivated in the heat, but the rain has been very welcome. i love love love the rain.
at home, also -- even though i've done all this cleaning at work (the errand service does housecleaning also) i've been tearing 'round like a whirling dervish getting things tidied up, scrubbed clean, cleared out and In Order. for some reason, the fall nesting season has hit me early. i have to have a clean, spare space to come back to after work or i'm restless and edgy. partly i think it's that we finally have money and can afford to straighten out our affairs in general, and partly i think it's the seasons changing. even my desk is less of a disaster than usual. i still need some baskets or something to sort things into, though. the papers, the papers.. they defeat me! i hate the paperwork part of being a grownup.
* * *
yesterday, a client of mine at the errand service whom i'll call mony were out shopping. first we had to go to the tailors to get her pants altered. because she refuses to take her walker out with her, we take the cane. managing to change in the tiny dressing room was quite a trial for her, so i pushed a metal folding chair under the curtain for her and sat on the other side of it so she'd have a rail to lean on, with me as ballast on the other side. it worked okay, but it was tiring for her, and she had ice cream on her list of things to do, so we headed towards baskin-robbins.
the week before, it had been up and running. when we arrived, the signs had been taken down, and it was GONE! we were shocked! having the ice-cream rug pulled out from under you on a late summer day is a very rude happening indeed. we decided that the adjacent grocery store would have to do, and went wandering around there, looking for things to want. mony loves grocery stores.
mony has this near-tourretic habit lately of bursting out with obscenities. we both find it very amusing. she has decided that the thoughts are nothing new, it's just that she used to think these things without saying them, and now that filter between brain and mouth has gone missing. she usually warns me that 'tact will not be on our menu for today.' she's very well spoken and educated, and is endlessly bored with her dinner companions at the residential facility where she lives. 'they talk endlessly of their husbands' jobs, and keeping the beds made and raising the kids, and they had no life of their own,' she says. i absolutely adore mony. i hope to be as ornery as she is when i get up there. she doesn't like to spend the day complaining, and chastises herself when she goes bitching about various things, but i encourage her because i think if you can't bitch about your life once in a while in an appropriate venue (like alone with me in a car, rather than at a table filled with disapproving, bible-thumping aging housewives at the dinner hour) then you'll just wind up saving it for later and stewing and making a mess of yourself. so i let her go on about this and that, and she lets me get annoyed about the stupid drivers in beaverton, and then we cracked open the pint of haagen daaz on the way back to her apartment and i produced the plastic spoons i'd swiped from the deli area, and the afternoon found us giggling over her foul-mouthed annoyances and stuffing ourselves with some very quality chocolate ice cream.
and to think, i get paid by the hour at this job. can you believe it??
at home, also -- even though i've done all this cleaning at work (the errand service does housecleaning also) i've been tearing 'round like a whirling dervish getting things tidied up, scrubbed clean, cleared out and In Order. for some reason, the fall nesting season has hit me early. i have to have a clean, spare space to come back to after work or i'm restless and edgy. partly i think it's that we finally have money and can afford to straighten out our affairs in general, and partly i think it's the seasons changing. even my desk is less of a disaster than usual. i still need some baskets or something to sort things into, though. the papers, the papers.. they defeat me! i hate the paperwork part of being a grownup.
* * *
yesterday, a client of mine at the errand service whom i'll call mony were out shopping. first we had to go to the tailors to get her pants altered. because she refuses to take her walker out with her, we take the cane. managing to change in the tiny dressing room was quite a trial for her, so i pushed a metal folding chair under the curtain for her and sat on the other side of it so she'd have a rail to lean on, with me as ballast on the other side. it worked okay, but it was tiring for her, and she had ice cream on her list of things to do, so we headed towards baskin-robbins.
the week before, it had been up and running. when we arrived, the signs had been taken down, and it was GONE! we were shocked! having the ice-cream rug pulled out from under you on a late summer day is a very rude happening indeed. we decided that the adjacent grocery store would have to do, and went wandering around there, looking for things to want. mony loves grocery stores.
mony has this near-tourretic habit lately of bursting out with obscenities. we both find it very amusing. she has decided that the thoughts are nothing new, it's just that she used to think these things without saying them, and now that filter between brain and mouth has gone missing. she usually warns me that 'tact will not be on our menu for today.' she's very well spoken and educated, and is endlessly bored with her dinner companions at the residential facility where she lives. 'they talk endlessly of their husbands' jobs, and keeping the beds made and raising the kids, and they had no life of their own,' she says. i absolutely adore mony. i hope to be as ornery as she is when i get up there. she doesn't like to spend the day complaining, and chastises herself when she goes bitching about various things, but i encourage her because i think if you can't bitch about your life once in a while in an appropriate venue (like alone with me in a car, rather than at a table filled with disapproving, bible-thumping aging housewives at the dinner hour) then you'll just wind up saving it for later and stewing and making a mess of yourself. so i let her go on about this and that, and she lets me get annoyed about the stupid drivers in beaverton, and then we cracked open the pint of haagen daaz on the way back to her apartment and i produced the plastic spoons i'd swiped from the deli area, and the afternoon found us giggling over her foul-mouthed annoyances and stuffing ourselves with some very quality chocolate ice cream.
and to think, i get paid by the hour at this job. can you believe it??