Dirty Thirties?

I'd like to meet the person who coined that phrase. . . because for me, the opposite appears to be true! As I enter my third decade of life, I seem to have become quite the cleaning fanatic!

I celebrated my big 3-0 in December. New Year's Eve was spent cleaning this house top to bottom - literally. It took me a 12-foot ladder and just shy of four hours, and that's just for the dusting! (light fixtures, fan blades, clearing cobwebs, etc). It was an all-day project, and I definitely felt great about it.

I did it again tonight. It didn't take NEARLY as long this time because it's still so clean from last time. I kind of like having a clean house, to be honest with you. Truth be told, DZ and I have spent so much time "on the go" in the past couple of years that the only time I deep cleaned was when we had company coming. . . for their first visit (sometimes for their second, but usually folks only get a single glimpse of the shiny floor, and after that. . . welcome to the dust bowl!). Put it this way. . . we haven't had any first-timers over here in a loooong time!

I used to clean my house. . . I promise. In fact, as a child the standing rule was that nobody was allowed to have any fun on Saturday morning till the whole house "shined like the top of the Chrysler building." Of course, baseboards and ceiling fan blades were reserved for when we needed to think about what we'd done (my own phrase, not Mom's), but the typical dust-sweep-mop-vacuum routine was, in fact, routine in the Davis household.

My freshman year of college, we actually had housekeeping inspections twice a week! Lucky for me, my roommate cleaned our room ALL. THE. TIME. Unfortunately, she also turned off my alarm clock ALL. THE. TIME. so I missed a lot of morning classes! She was such a light sleeper, and me? DEEP. So deep, in fact, that I slept through the night my neighbor's house burned - and there was a fire truck right outside my bedroom window.

I always lucked out in college with clean roommates, so it was easy to maintain some sense of cleanliness. In fact, it spilled over for many years until, one day, I just got tired of cleaning. So I quit. Not all together, mind you. I just went from weekly cleaning, to monthly, to quarterly. . . and then, after that? Semi-annual is the most generous description for my deep cleaning days.

Lucky for me (I'm quite lucky, aren't I?), DZ is VERY tidy. . . and by VERY, I mean "organizes his closet by shirt type, color and sleeve length" tidy. And he's not just a "closet" tidier, either. He's a whole-house-from-the-bookshelves-to-the-kitchen-cabinets-and-everything-in-between tidier. I love it because it brings a sense of order to our home. . . but order doesn't keep the dust away! Granted, he spent the first year we were together picking up after me, and never once did he complain. So, you can imagine how offended he was when he witnessed my first "deep cleaning" session and the first thing I said was, "I don't see HOW we can live in all this FILTH!" He was like, "Hey, crazy lady! I bust my hump every day to keep this house clean and pick up after you, so don't talk to me about FILTH!"

It was a turning point for both of us. I never noticed how much time he spent cleaning up after me - shoes from all over the house ended up in my closet, piles of clothes all over his side of the bed were folded on my dresser when I went looking for them, paperwork always found its home without my help. Likewise, he had never seen me in "deep cleaning" mode (I'm pretty sure I had my headlamp on while I was cleaning the shower so I could inspect the grout for cleanliness!) and didn't know what filth I was talking about when I said that. These days, I TRY (and sometimes fail, but still always try) to be better about picking up after myself.

And DZ?

Well, he's very encouraging when deep cleaning day comes along. He loves to see the "before" and "after," and he's wise enough to stay away for the "during" part of it.

Brrrrrr. . .

The cold front is here! I love it, I love it, I love it! As I was helping DZ bring his laundry in this evening, I commented that this is the one time of year that I wish our washer and dryer were inside our house instead of in a shed in the back yard. (For those of you who haven't been here, our house was built in the 1940s - long before the luxurious laundry rooms in more modern homes.) He said, "Are you kidding? This is perfect weather - why now, instead of when it's 100 degrees out here?" So, I took him on a little trip down memory lane. And now, you're invited to join me there as well. . .

When we were little kids, Dad worked away from home A LOT, so he wasn't home too often for the day-to-day stuff like bathtime, mealtime, bedtime, etc. So, when he was home, it was a BIG DEAL for all of us. I remember when I was a little kid and he was home during a cold front. Mom had us in the tub, and Dad took three towels to the dryer and let them bounce around in the hot air while we splashed and played in the tub. Then, just when it was time to get out, he got the three towels and let us wrap up in them to stay warm. I felt like a Paris Princess that night, and I think of that every time I pull hot clothes out of the dryer on a cold night. Of course, scruffy beards also make me think of my dad in the winter time - and how he used to "sandpaper" us when we piled up in bed with them when Dad was home.

Of course, my good memories of Mom during cold weather are in much greater supply and don't involve facial hair, since she was the one doing all the bathing, and feeding, and bedtiming. In fact, as I sit here and type this I am wearing her comfy green "Color Me Cotton" housedress that she used to wear when it was cold! I remember getting to eat lots and lots of biscuits with Grandma's Molasses on 'em, as well as "chicken enchiladas" (King Ranch Casserole) and enough Maple & Brown Sugar Oatmeal to sustain a small army! "Eat this warm stuff," she would say. "It will stick to your ribs and keep you going until lunch!" She was right, as usual.

Of course, we grew up in Kingsville, so it wasn't exactly COLD too often. I remember going swimming on my birthday one year (in December)! Of course, it wasn't always so balmy. I also remember when we had a cold snap that froze our orange grove. . . that was no good!

If you're still reading, thanks for taking that little trip down memory lane with me. Not sure why I'm so nostalgic tonight - maybe it's because we were looking at DZ's baby pictures! Here's a photo send-off, to borrow Brittany's trademark conclusion. I think it explains a lot, don't you?

Ctrl-Z

As a graphic designer, I approach my work more from a "try it and see" than a "sketch it and plan" perspective. This makes me a HUGE fan of the hotkey combo "Ctrl-Z" which is the equivalent of mousing up to Edit-Undo. Don't like the new color scheme? Ctrl-Z, and voila! You're back to navy and gold. Pink and yellow - really, what was I thinking?! Ctrl-Z works wonders!

The other night, I got some news that was a bit disappointing to me, so I decided to take out my frustrations on my furniture. I was re-arranging my home office (side note: it looks FANTASTIC!) and I thought I'd move my desk over just "this much" and see how it looked. Got it there, didn't like it, unplugged EVERYTHING in the process of moving it four inches, and at that moment, it dawned on me how cool it would be to have Ctrl-Z in my life!

That got me thinking. . . I'm not one for regrets, but if I only could, I'd go back and Ctrl-Z the way my last job ended. It would really help me down the road to not have that hanging over my head. Who knows? Might have even spared me the disappointment from the other day. . . but then I wouldn't have taken it out on the furniture, so I wouldn't have screwed up by moving my desk, and I never would've thought about Ctrl-Z. On the flip-side, if that ending hadn't gone to hell as it did, I wouldn't need to Ctrl-Z it.