I had a weirdly productive weekend. I mean BIZARRE levels of productivity. I can’t quite figure it out. Normally, I’m happy if I caught up with the laundry, but this’ this was freakish. I probably won’t even remember everything in the retelling.
It all started last week when I got sick of looking at the messy recyclables in the kitchen. So I picked them all up and straightened. And then you could see the schmeng on the floor where the recyclables had been overflowing. Ooohkay. Thus, I loaded the dishwasher (it’s one of those that you roll over to the sink), moved the microwave cart, and then took out all the garbage and proceeded to sweep and mop and Swiffer the hell out of that area. It’s still our grungy 1968 linoleum with the drywall mud from our kitchen expansion last year permanently encrusted in the patterns, so it doesn’t get all that shiny nor pretty but at least it wasn’t harboring any sentient germ life forms.
Then on Saturday, I got up uber early and continued on my productive ways, with lots of laundry and dishwashing. Then I zipped through Sbux for a venti soy chai, then went to the bank, the post office (to mail Submission #5 of the week! Go me!), got the car washed (third time this week’ dinglefarfer snow) and then stopped at an outlet store that was going out of business (probably because *I* never shop there’ this was my second time in the store, the first was when it opened). We made plans with my siblings to go to Lord of the Rings: Now With More Hobbit-yay, so I ran home and got the Two Towers extended dvd for Mo, who was sitting home in her sweats being a slacker. And then it was 10:30. Seriously, it was like I had the power to slow down time itself. I picked up Esteban and we went to a local art show. Esteban then negated our lunch plans by filling up on overpriced fake nachos and cookies (‘But they’re snickerdoodles!’), and we wandered around and sniffed at most of the art, which looked like it belonged in a craft show rather than an art show. There was one photographer whose work impressed Esteban very much and then I remembered that he was my favorite photographer at the summer art fair downtown. Turns out that this is his second show. Fabulous work. I bought some raffle tickets for the scholarship fund and put all of my tickets toward winning one of his prints. Man. I hope I get it because it’s beautiful.
After the art show, Esteban went back to work and I returned to our domicile to reign supreme once again. It was as though the spirits of all of my housewife foremothers took over. I cleaned the entire kitchen (since Esteban has apparently decided that he no longer does any housework whatsoever, or perhaps his level of tolerance for clutter is far higher than mine at the moment. And also, Ward and June have gone on a cruise so Esteban is staying at their house in the snooty suburbs ten miles away to tend to their dogs, thus there was no chance of him rectifying the situation in the next week), which involved three loads of dishes (mostly because last week, in apparent preparation for this Superwoman weekend, I was a cooking goddess, making on three separate nights, jambalaya, beef stroganoff, and chicken parmesan from scratch, and brownies, which were not from scratch, but just as good). THEN I tackled the expanded part of the kitchen. It only has a sub floor (Esteban has been putting off dealing with the kitchen floor for six months now.) so we tend to treat it like part of the garage instead of one side of a room. It had several empty boxes from Christmas and several storage tubs which needed to be, you know, stored. It also had three bags and a box of stuff for charity. I cut down all of the boxes into manageable size, dragged the charity stuff to the trunk of my car, and basically kicked the kitchen’s ass. Then I pulled a big braided room rug out of storage. It’s one of those blue and white numbers that I bought a long time ago because I love the combination of blue and white together, but I hadn’t fully developed my strong aversion to all things countryesque. We’ve been using the smaller versions of that rug in front of the sink and door from the breezeway, but never used the big room one because there had never been a place for it. So I flipped that over the subfloor. Esteban’s not going to like it, but I will defy him to tell me that the bare wood subfloor looks better than the braided rug and then he’ll grump off like the burgermeister he occasionally is.
Then I tidied up the living room and Swiffered the entire floor, including the part covered by the big rug. It was a cleaning coup. I think I did some other stuff too, but I don’t remember. It was a cleaning black out, I suspect due to the furious chemicals I was inhaling.
Then, while waiting for Esteban to pick me up in the parent’s minivan, I cleaned out the mail in the mailbox! I know! Where did this all of this efficiency come from? Esteban, Mo, Jonathon and I went to dinner at Sports Bar #219, after which, I used the bathroom and plugged their lightweight toilet. Which was pretty funny. I ran out to the table and announced that we had to flee (FLEE LIKE THE WIND!), as I caused their water saver toilet to malfunction and retain my very ladylike bouquet for the joy of the next patron. But there would not be fleeing, as Mo instructed Jonathon to use the bathroom right as I was running back to the table. So we were forced to wait, me cringing the entire time, certain that the Poop Police would swoop down upon me and force me to admit that girls do in fact make boom boom. If they could only keep me from laughing, that is. Because even now, three days later, I’m smirking.
Then we went to see the Hobbit movie, which was surprisingly packed, considering that it’s been out for several months. I rationed my giant Diet Coke this time so that I wasn’t experiencing bladder explosion and pain during the four hundred different endings. Although seeing it a second time, it allowed me to analyze it a bit more. There are so many stupid parts that they could have cut, for instance, the four different scenes that Gandolf and Aragorn say ‘Do you think Frodo is dead?’ ‘Boy I sure hope not.’ ‘Me too.’ This time I was even more struck by how spectacularly bad the dialogue in certain places. For instance, the scene with Aragorn and the dead guys:
Dead Guys : The way is shut! Now you die!
Aragorn : I don’t think so.
(Fight. Aragorn can apparently hurt the ghosts.)
Dead Guys : Only the big sexy elf sword can hurt us!
Aragorn : See? I told you.
Dead Guys : We thought it was broken!
Aragorn : Oh, yeah, it got fixed.
Dead Guys : Oh.
Aragorn : So, wanna come fight with us then?
Dead Guys : (whoosh around and dance like the Thriller video)
Seriously, I’ve seen episodes of Scooby Doo with more compelling dialogue. Cripes. Although, the best part was during the latter part of the movie when something rather surprising happens to one of the characters, and our entire movie audience screamed. Seriously. Screamed. I knew it was coming too. As the suspense was building, I kept thinking that if I were anywhere but repressed little Green Bay, there would be someone in the audience talking back to the screen, saying ‘Don’t go in there! Look behind you! You need some bigass can of Raid or something, Fredo!’ And then I would have had utter glee. But when everyone screamed, I just laughed and laughed and laughed. I’m certain someone thought I was psychotic, but I couldn’t help it. I had actual tears because it was so funny and I ended up leaning over into the coat chair to muffle my laughter. Hysterical.
Then homeward, where I sacked out to become a dance floor for Tilly’s version of Lord of the Dance. Her new favorite trick is to launch herself over my sleeping body, only she uses my sleeping body as a spring board. Very fun stuff. It’s her way of waking me up, since I’ve been able to successfully ignore the pawpawpaw on my cheek and the head butts. But the fourteen pound bowling ball being dropped onto my ribcage? Not as easy to overlook. I can’t wait until Esteban comes back and can pet her into submission. I simply cannot devote the time and energy to placating the cat. Especially not when I am SuperCleaningOrganizingWoman!!!
So yeah, Sunday was more of the same. I continued the onslaught on the laundry and kitchen, but this time, I took it at a slower pace. Since I had a huge load of laundry to put away, I watched some netflix movies while I folded. Zoolander will forever be the Matching Sock movie, as that’s what I was doing for the entire DVD. Then I tried to hang some pictures, but realized that my Japanese flash card hanging was not going to be safe sitting on two nails. I would have to get some picture hangers. So, I steeled myself, made a list on the back of an envelope pulled from the recyclables, and then went out into the cold. First I stopped at Sbux for some sustenance, then dropped my trunk full of donations at Goodwill, then I endeavored to the Hundred Dollar Store (aka Home Despot). My entire list was as such:
D batteries (for flashlights)
Furniture polish
Picture hangers
Drain opener
Level
Hahahaha’ silly Weetabix. Silly, silly Weetabix. The list, she is so quaint.
Of course, I forgot to add Spot Shot to the list, as I ran out during the Tilly Barfatorium that was the last two weeks, but it was conveniently near the furniture polish, so that was fine. I needed 5 D batteries, but they only seemed to come in packs of 4 (for about $5) or 12 (for $11), so I ended up getting the 12 pack since regardless I had to buy more batteries than I needed and might as well get enough to fill both flashlights twice, rather than not have enough when the first batteries went dead? It’s probably faulty logic, but ah well. Then it occurred to me that while I was cleaning, I had needed a step stool, but we broke our ancient one during spring cleaning last year and now I had no way to reach the back shelves of our pantry. Ah ha! I was in the right place. The drain opener ended up being $11 but it’s a huge amount and it seems as though I’m always buying drain opener for the bathroom sink. And then I ended up grabbing a really pretty white and purple orchid for the kitchen. I suspect it was because I was being overloaded with all of this manly Home Depot stuff and needed some femininity to make sure everyone knew that I was actually a girl.
Total cost of trip to Hundred Dollar store for picture hangers: $118. And I forgot to buy the level.
I shouldn’t be surprised anymore. I mean, they should do away with the ruse of free will at the home improvement store. We could just walk in, hand over our hundred odd dollars, they would hand us a random bag of whatnot, and then point us in the direction of our overpriced domestic autos and lightweight extended cab trucks with the leather interiors, leaving us with feelings of self-sufficiency and rugged frontiersmanship. In the way that we’ve convinced ourselves that the suburbs are the country and it’s us against the land. Us and our $3499 lawn tractor, that is.
Anyway, I went home, hung some pictures, did our taxes ($39 refund! Wow! Almost enough for another trip to the home store. I suppose it’s better than paying in like last year! Woot!), did more laundry, watched two more movies and then headed off to bed with an enormous sense of accomplishment.
