Sunday, June 26, 2005
Cleaning House
Somebody besides me must have been complaining in the neighborhood; so far this has been the most orderly Gay Pride Day I've seen in years. It was even possible to get out and run errands before the marchers hit the block. I caught a glimpse of the festivities a while ago. People on floats were throwing free t-shirts. Everybody loves free t-shirts.
I still had planned to stay in and catch up on household chores, which began unexpectedly last night when we were trying to medicate Ashley.
We have a tall, narrow metal cabinet in the kitchen that we brought here to use as a pantry when we had to clear out Jim' s mother's house back in 1999. It's the kind of thing that should've been scrapped then: It has a rusty, wobbly bottom and the doors have to be closed with masking tape because the latches have been broken for years.
And to compound matters, this cabinet can't be placed smack up against the wall because of the old-fashioned baseboard moldings and the tilt at the edges of the floors that you always get when you live in a 150-year-old building.
So this cabinet's always been about six inches away from the wall, with cardboard under it to shim it in front and storage boxes on top and the whole thing sways precariously whenever Chico jumps on it, as he always does.
There's this window of opportunity when you have to medicate the average cat where you can grab Fluffy and get the drops into his ears or eyes or mouth before he's hip to what's going on and bolts. Last night my timing was slightly off. Maybe I was cocky because the last three nights went well. At any rate, Ashley bolted to the six inches between the cabinet and the wall and we spent the better part of four hours chasing her back and forth between the swaying cabinet and the nether regions under the bed.
Finally, we both decided that the cabinet had the potential for harm more than good, and at two in the morning we decided to empty it out, put the canned and packaged goods in other places and then this morning with the help of a friend, we carried it downstairs and junked it in the backyard. And then we got rid of a lot of other stuff we'd been meaning to get rid of to make room for the stuff that had been in the cabinet, after we'd gotten rid of half the stuff that had been in the cabinet.
It was a great, cathartic purging and I now feel mighty. I've been released from the obligation of finishing packages of gourmet coffee that I tried and didn't like, and pouring it into gift mugs that I never used. I threw the packages in the trash and placed the gift mugs downstairs in the front hallway of the building. Maybe somebody can pass them out at the parade.
I still had planned to stay in and catch up on household chores, which began unexpectedly last night when we were trying to medicate Ashley.
We have a tall, narrow metal cabinet in the kitchen that we brought here to use as a pantry when we had to clear out Jim' s mother's house back in 1999. It's the kind of thing that should've been scrapped then: It has a rusty, wobbly bottom and the doors have to be closed with masking tape because the latches have been broken for years.
And to compound matters, this cabinet can't be placed smack up against the wall because of the old-fashioned baseboard moldings and the tilt at the edges of the floors that you always get when you live in a 150-year-old building.
So this cabinet's always been about six inches away from the wall, with cardboard under it to shim it in front and storage boxes on top and the whole thing sways precariously whenever Chico jumps on it, as he always does.
There's this window of opportunity when you have to medicate the average cat where you can grab Fluffy and get the drops into his ears or eyes or mouth before he's hip to what's going on and bolts. Last night my timing was slightly off. Maybe I was cocky because the last three nights went well. At any rate, Ashley bolted to the six inches between the cabinet and the wall and we spent the better part of four hours chasing her back and forth between the swaying cabinet and the nether regions under the bed.
Finally, we both decided that the cabinet had the potential for harm more than good, and at two in the morning we decided to empty it out, put the canned and packaged goods in other places and then this morning with the help of a friend, we carried it downstairs and junked it in the backyard. And then we got rid of a lot of other stuff we'd been meaning to get rid of to make room for the stuff that had been in the cabinet, after we'd gotten rid of half the stuff that had been in the cabinet.
It was a great, cathartic purging and I now feel mighty. I've been released from the obligation of finishing packages of gourmet coffee that I tried and didn't like, and pouring it into gift mugs that I never used. I threw the packages in the trash and placed the gift mugs downstairs in the front hallway of the building. Maybe somebody can pass them out at the parade.
