Sunday Serenity #299

So what is a vacuum cleaner doing in a post dedicated to things that induce states of bliss, comfort, serenity, pleasure or joy?

Well for one its new and I get a kick out of new.  And its the first brand new vacuum cleaner we ever had all previous ones being hand-me-downs or bought second hand.

Also its blue and my favorite color is blue.

But primarily it is because we have lived in our new place since the day after Xmas without one and vacuuming a carpet beats sweeping a carpet.

But I confess I also get a kick out of vacuuming and always have as far back as I can remember into my toddlerhood.

In honor of the new vacuum cleaner Ed and I did a fairly thorough cleaning of the kitchen, living room, bathroom and my office..  I started in on the kitchen almost as soon as Ed was up this morning which was before dawn.  Remember I am sleeping from mid afternoon til at least sundown to avoid being active during the hottest hours.  So I've developed the habit of doing chores in the early morning hours between 5 and 10.  Not all five of those hours of course.  I usually work in 15 minute snatches completing small chores and going back to my office for an hour or so in between.

But today I spent over an hour in the kitchen putting away the dishes then loading the dishwasher and while it ran cleaning the microwave inside and out, cleaning the counter tops edge to edge and all of the small appliances and other items sitting on them and the top and front of the stove.  Some of this had gotten neglected because of the heatwave and because all of our dishrags and towels had gotten too nasty to use because of the heat and because we've been putting off walking up to the laundromat because of the heat.  And we ran out of paper towels before payday.

So Ed had picked up paper towels, reusable handi-wipes and scrubbing pads at thee same time as the vacuum cleaner and I was nearly as eager to break all of those in as I was the vacuum cleaner which is good because before it made sense to vacuum the carpets we needed to sweep the hardwood floors and before that made sense we needed to clean the higher surfaces where there was any risk of brushing crumbs etc off onto the floor.

Also I had to wait for Ed to declutter his corner of the living room and clean up his roll-your-own cig mess in the kitchen.

I finished in the kitchen about 7 and rewarded myself with a video.  I'm not sure what time Ed started but by eleven he had gotten his corner in the living room cleaned, the tobacco mess in the kitchen, the litter box, the toilet, and swept the hard floors of the bathroom, hallway and kitchen.  Meanwhile I had prepped the floor in my office and so I was able to vac the two rooms all in one swoop.  That left the bedroom but by then we were starting to feel the house heating up and there was a lot of prep work in the bedroom before we could run the vacuum in there.

So I topped it off with a shower and shampoo and then watched a video and played spider solitaire.

Meanwhile Ed had also been making today's main meal, a pasta salad.  He'd put the pasta and eggs on to boil almost as soon as I was done in the kitchen and while I showered and watched my video he was putting it together--peeling the egs, chopping onions and chunking cheddar cheese.

Once it hit noon I was obligated to earn any further video watching or games  by completing certain of my ROW80 goals for the day so I put in my hour on those.  By then the salad had chilled enough to be good and I dished some up and ate while watching another video.  Then it was time for me to take my frozen water bottles to bed with me.

That was at 4pm and I slept until 10.  For the first hour I was awake I played spider while eating another bowl of Ed wonderful pasta salad.

By the time I got up the house was at such a comfort level I didn't even need the frozen rag around my neck or the frozen gel pack behind my back as I sat at my desk.  Which was an improvement on most of the last two weeks since it was usually after midnight before I stopped swapping out gel packs and rags every 30 to 40 minutes.  I hear we are done with the triple digit heat for at least a week and might even be dropping into the 80s mid week.  That sounds downright chilly.

All in all a very excellent Sunday.