A Wonderful Horrible Time of the Year

We have now entered that wonderful time of the year when the geese honk their way across the sky, the sere grass gradually turns green, the sun rises earlier and stays up later, and I am full of energy and a zest for living.

Too bad all I can see is dirt. Dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt! AUGGGGGHHH!

The walls of my bedroom are so clean you could eat off them, supposing you could persuade the food to stick to them. My closets are organized, the winter clothes put away and our spring and summer wardrobe is either hanging in them, or waiting in a laundry basket to be ironed. And the rest of my house is a total disaster.

Yes folks, its THAT time of year ? Spring cleaning time! For the next week or so, the entire house will be turned upside down, shaken vigorously, scrubbed, polished, painted, vaccumed, shampooed, and manicured into some semblance of order and cleanliness that will last approximately 1.5 hours.

Spring cleaning is a bad habit I developed after living with my neatnick mother during the vulnerably impressionable years of my childhood. I haven't been able shake it try as I might. One year I tried to go without spring cleaning, but I developed a facial tic as a result and went into a cleaning frenzy by July that took my children several months to recover from. They still get a haunted look in their eyes when I bring out the buckets and cleaning rags.

One of the current projects being undertaken at the moment is the painting and wall papering of the girls' bedroom. I bought the paint, wallpaper, and fabric for new curtains two years ago, and Hannah has finally reached the age where I can shove most of the work onto her young shoulders while I pretend to help. She has already spackled the holes in the wall and sanded them and Trahern successfully repaired the hole where the doorknob went through. Tomorrow they are going to paint the ceiling white to cover all the bug splats from many generations of mosquitoes that met an untimely death there. My upstairs hall would give the fire marshall a coronary because it is nearly impassable from the furniture moved from the bedroom. I just pray none of the children decides to light the house on fire until it is moved back.

Another project for this year will hopefully be the completion of the installation of the upstairs bathroom sink. A considerable number of our children have lived all their lives without benefit of a bathroom sink. The house we are currently living in was built by my husband thirteen years ago. That means that children numbered 6 - 11 have learned to brush their teeth, and wash their hands and face in the bath tub. They feel strange using bathroom sinks when in other people's homes. I managed to persuade my husband to install the sink in the downstairs' bath before Garnet's birth so that the midwife would have a place to wash her hands besides the toilet bowl. Then when I was expecting Elodie, I managed to make it known that I would remain pregnant and miserable until the bathroom sink for our ensuite was installed. It was installed in record time. However, producing a baby every couple of years is entirely too drastic a method of getting the house finished. I am hoping that the thought of having 10 people, who are visiting us this summer for the wedding/receptions, jockeying for position at our ensuite door so they can brush their teeth will be enough to do to do the trick this time. I'll let you know if I was right.