THE CLEANING FRENZY

So where have I been for the past two weeks? On a cleaning frenzy.

I will admit that I am not a clean freak. I am not even a good housekeeper. And it shows. I’d rather be out in the barn with a pitchfork or out in the lush green jungle with all the living things. Nevertheless, one has to clean a house sometime or else one has to burn it down. This year I came very close to striking the match.

This goes along with my theory that we are nothing more than a product of our past. My mother wasn’t a good housekeeper and she never taught me any of the homely arts. That’s what I thought of then, anyway. Homely. Once as a little girl I tried to bake some peanut butter cookies but they turned green. Not a healthy green, either, I don’t  know why, and it put me off. For the rest of my life. I don’t like to cook,  but I’m working on that one. I mean I can’t learn to cook any younger now can I?

When I married for the first time, as a new bride I moved to Quito, Ecuador. My groom and I dwelt with grand aristocracy  in a great white mansion on Los Compos Eliseos. It had a very large three-story foyer with a circular staircase and a glass ceiling which leaked when the fabulous storms in the Andes roared and ranted. There were two major bedroom suites with glass panels that leaked, big time, in the bathroom ceiling. I don’t think it had a skylight in the kitchen, I was only in it once, in the middle of the night when I felt a snack coming on, but I couldn’t find the light switch so that temptation did not get delivered. I had to wait for the cook to get up the next morning so the upstairs maid could deliver me a heavenly scented brew in the Italian marble tub.

Life today, in the USA, is very different. I’ve never worked as hard, physically, as I do now and a cleaning frenzy around here is a major gymnastic feat. I’m up in the rafters. I’m under the sinks and counters. I’m in hidden hidy holes I forget even existed. I’ve already worn out three brooms. I dislike vacuum cleaners, I aways get tangled in the cords. Once I fell off a ladder clambering clumsy footed  down after scrubbing the skylight in the living room. It now looks its age but it doesn’t leak and an artist friend thought it a beautiful piece of green flecked marble.

I must also tell you this about my house, it was never finished, probably never will be, and it’s wide open to the elements and the animals and the greenery that slithers in on silent stalks and leaves that whisper nothings in my ear. Birds also flutter  in and out. Not always welcome, but the red cardinals flash gorgeous and the thrush tweet and twitter sweet.

Why the furor of the frenzy? Because I’m hosting a happy 82 in August. If I survive.

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