Tired. We are tired.
Jane has been transformed into a fountain of snot, and though she is being pretty good natured about it, she is still not quite the very pinnacle of well rested good humor, and neither am I. Yet for some reason I decided today would be the right day to clean the front porch, which had gone happily uncleaned since before we moved in.
I should have taken pictures before I started, because it was comically encrusted with
- mysterious black clinging dirt on every surface
- drifts of leaves and twigs and other kinds of more silty dusty dirt
- cobwebs EVERYWHERE
- really, everywhere
These were dense, creepy, luxuriant cobwebs. They would be the envy of any Halloween propmaster. They covered every window corner, every intersection of planes. They stretched from the back of each chair leg to the floor, and across each gap in the railing.
Some were fairly small and just held more of the black clinging dirt. Others were larger and bedecked with gnats and dried leaves. The biggest one, right by the front door, was about the size and shape of a substantial colander, and full of dead moths.
Oh, look, I missed a corner:
Just multiply that times EVERYWHERE and you get the idea.
Anyway, having strategically waited until it was well into the hottest part of the day, not to mention, of course, the twelve months of cobweb ripening that I'd waited before that, I made my move.
I swept and brushed and swabbed and whacked and toiled and missed that one corner while Jane stood on the other side of the screen door, rattling it and gushing snot, suggesting "Out! Out! Out!" alternating with an occasional "Cheese?" And now the porch is merely ramshackle and dusty (except for that corner) rather than shameful and haunted.
And I am sweaty and stinky and tired and pleased. Mediocrity hooray!
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