A house day

After a busy day, our house, mostly, is now habitable again. There was much scrubbing and swabbing. Linda even wore out her compulsive swabbing urge. Floors in the corners were scrubbed. Baseboards wiped down and wood oil added to them. My desk was even excavated, check out the before and after.

You probably can't notice, but my keyboard is white now, instead of some disgusting colour mixed with food remnants. It badly needed to be washed. As did the desk itself. When I tell you I usually eat breakfast while reading blogs and Facebook, you'll totally understand.

The clean up and moving stuff around took up a lot of the day. There is still much more to do. Some excavation in the media room which was a handy dumping ground. Lots of things got stuffed into drawers to be dealt with later.

We've never wanted a sterile hospital operating room for a home. We like a lived in look. A dust bunny or two, lurking discretely in the corners or hiding under the furniture is not the end of the world. Books stacked up that we mean to read add an air of culture. Some cat fur shed onto a chair makes it more comfortable. Some scratches and dings in the drywall are an inevitable part of daily life.

It's sort of like a face. Lately I've been looking at faces more. Of course the "perfect" faces are what we see in the media. Airbrushed. Photoshopped. Make up-ed. Plastic. Unmoving. Unreal. Lifeless. I like faces that have imperfections, wrinkles, laugh lines, freckles, scars. Sometimes there is lots of sweat. All these indicate that the person has been alive, accumulating experiences. There is much one can learn from looking closely at a face. As along as she doesn't think you're a pervert and slap your face.

However, it's clear that things had got out of hand. We were well over the line of looking lived in, to outright clutter. Most of office was unusable. There were a bazillion CD's lurking around the CD player, and the problem is that many of them are in the computer and that's mostly how they get played. There is a wire to use an iPod or iPad to supply music to the stereo, but we didn't do that much. Now that I found that wire, maybe we'll do it more. It sounds better than the iMac speakers. There were all sorts of things lurking in all sorts of places for all sorts of reasons. All of them gathering dust.

It isn't like we were rampaging around the house, frothing at the mouth, trying frantically to get it all done before something else had to happen. We slept in. We talked over our plans, and what we wanted to get done. Then started, and did better than we thought we would. Much more remains. Maybe that will be the great winter project this year, to try to get the clutter under control. If we can do that, we'll tackle world peace next.

This is not a workout free blog. I was down on my bike today. After a bit of limbering up I did a gradual warmup to the top of endurance range, but my right hip was still being cranky. We have a softball something like it (it's pink, after all) that is perfect for rolling those hard to get areas. I rolled over it on my hip, and found lots of crunchy stuff. Then I got back on the bike. It was better for a while,  then was starting to get sore. 1.25 hrs, plus some stretching and rolling on the ball. I haven't run for a couple weeks and I'm missing it.

One can't avoid all the commentary about the recent mass murder in the States, but I've been trying. There's lots to say about it, but I don't have the stomach at the moment.

What just kills me here is that I had a great title while I was on my bike, but now I can't remember it. I think I need to get used to that.