Bring on the New

I've been busy today playing a new game I like to call "Catching the Water Flying in Through the Windows".

My 86 year old mother lives in a house that is 71 years old (only three owners), and last week she decided that it was time to paint it. Okay, this is a good decision. She is contemplating selling it and it is looking a little war-torn due to recent neglect. 


However, due to the fact that most of the windows are single glaze, multi-paned, and made during the Great Depression, they let in as much of the elements as they do light. So, as you can imagine, when 3,500 psi of water is directed at them in a frenzy of cleaning energy, a fair bit of that nasty, dirty, spider-laden slush comes shooting through to the inside. And I was there to catch it.


You can picture it: I am mouthing to the handy-man outside on the precariously stretched ladder, "stick to one window at a time!" But he is thinking, naturally, that it would be better to spray from the top of the set of windows to the bottom, back and forth, with an inserted wiggle of up and down. What this means to me is that I am frantically trying to match his movements pushing rags up against the windows to stop the deluge, simultaneously trying to dodge the bits of gunk flying toward me. A bit like that hit-the-mole-with-a-mallet game at arcades, but slightly messier.  And only he has the raincoat and waders on...


Everything is beautiful now and, to his credit, he did a thorough job. No wet masses of pine-needles or soggy plant matter litter the yard or walkways.  Just a clean house sparkling in the summer sun waiting for a fresh coat of paint.


And, on the inside, every window shines clear again. Years of cobwebs have been wiped away, spider poop and dust now only a memory. Reflecting on the day, I sit and ponder the expression that I hear so often, "They sure don't make things like they used to" and wonder, "What the hell?"  It's a good thing!