The sun’ll come out. . .

Tomorrow.

I’ve been singing that for about a week.

Unfortunately.

It sticks in your head. Along with visions of little red-headed orphan girls.

It’s a horrible song—of immense popular appeal.

(It should be noted that its horribleness is not due to any intrinsic compositional or lyrical flaws. It’s just that it will not go away!)

The thing is. . .the sun may or may not come out tomorrow. I don’t know.

I do know that it came out yesterday. And it’s out today. And. . .yay!

Because it was getting very, very depressing.

It is truly fine for it to be gray and gloomy in the north. It’s the paradigm for the fall. But this is the Sunshine State. Got that? Sunshine. It’s in all the ads. So I expect. . .you know. . .sunshine.

Not only do I expect it, but I need it. We have to decorate the dock. The Boat Parade is coming. Not for about a month, but still. When the boats come by, we have to have the lights up. And I need sunshine for that. Not warmth, necessarily, but sunshine. It’s very difficult to get in the holiday mood when it’s all foggy and misty.

Dock decorations are hard enough. One year we tried for a New York skyline, but you can’t make a good corner with a rope light. It put a damper on our creativity (to say nothing of a vaguely pornographic twist on our Empire State Building), so we’ve given up murals. Now, we just try not to fall in the water as we’re stringing the lights up along the roof and around the pilings. We have acquired a nice lighted peacock lawn decoration this year—although possibly not for the dock.

Peacocks are big in my family. My grandparents used to have a bunch of them hanging around the farm. In fact, their descendants are still over there yelling away, wandering the highways and byways. And all of us have various vases and umbrella stands full of feathers.

That’s another little miracle.

You can just walk around behind a peacock in the late spring, early summer, and pick up those beautiful works of art.

So, I’m delighted to have this light-up bird. I look forward to seeing him twinkle away.

But, I’m more delighted to have some sunshine. . .and I definitely look forward to the voice of Li’l Orphan Annie fading off my internal audio track!

Bet your bottom dollar.

Sssssteam heat–we got. . . .

Not really.

High on the list of things I miss from living in New York (in addition to the laundry room) is steam heat.

Oh, the luxury of coming in out of the snow to a toasty warm apartment and changing into shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of January! We almost never turned the radiators on. The heat from the risers—the pipes that carried the steam to the apartments above us—was more than enough to keep us comfortable.

You’d think I’d be warmer now that I live in Florida.

Ha!

It is true that the outside temperature is warmer. Inside, however, is a whole other story!

My house has at least four climate zones. Upstairs, the air is one temperature. Downstairs, another. My office, a third, and the sunken living room is a fourth. I’m betting there’s about ten degrees difference from one area to another.

And, of course, it’s a damp cold. Not good. Not good at all.

I’m adapting.

I may spend the winter upstairs. I may break out the sweaters and leggings for the times I need to be downstairs.

(I do realize that normal people might think I’m crazy. The house is not that cold. It’s just not toasty.)

I suspect finally getting ceiling fans will be a big improvement. I also know it will be better if it would get colder outside. That would make the heat cycle on more often. (A dilemma. Warmth? Bank account?)

Eventually, I will get the ceiling fans. I will get the gas fireplace repaired. I will bring the kerosene heater in from the garage. I might even buy a pair of slippers in a bigger size so that I can wear two or three pairs of socks.

I could always wear my magic hat. (Ask my nieces and nephews.)

While I’m thawing my toes here, you might enjoy this little clip from the 1957 film version of The Pajama Game with Carol Haney and some quintessential Bob Fosse choreography

Stay warm!

Celebrating the dark ages

Technologically speaking.

I bought a phone yesterday for $2 bucks.

A corded phone.

The thing is—I have this house. It’s a big house. It came with a phone jack in every room. (Almost.) Plus the garage and the dock. That’s a total of about eleven jacks. And I came with exactly three phones. Well, five if you count the extra handsets to the cordless phone.

One of the handsets fell off the hood of the car over by the chicken church. (Don’t ask.) Anyway, it’s gone. Run over by a car. Eaten by an alligator. Something.

Lost to me forever, however it happened.

The other two handsets are, at any given moment, in need of new batteries.

I know, I know.

Many people have switched to a completely cellular communication system.

I’m not one of them.

I’m not a “millenial.”

Sue me.

I like corded phones.

I hear better on them. It’s easier to hold a handset between your ear and your shoulder and do two things at once. They don’t need batteries. I don’t have to remember to charge them. They tend to stay in the vicinity of the phone jack instead of ring from beneath sofas and behind bookcases. If a hurricane hits and the cell tower falls, the phone lines might still be up.

I like corded phones.

So, I was very happy to find one at a garage sale one block over for $2 bucks. Once upon a time, this was a fairly expensive, 2-line phone. Speaker. Programmable numbers. The works.

It cleaned up nice.

It works.

I only need 3 or 4 more, and I’ll have one everywhere there’s a jack. I think I’ll be spending some more time at garage sales.

Oh. . .and if anybody knows how to get a phone to call itself. . . is that possible?. . . maybe I won’t have to get an intercom system or a sackful of walkie-talkies in order to find my husband. He’s hard to keep track of in all these rooms.

Inside and Out

Mis-spending my life?

Emily Christensen (I’m sorry—I don’t know who she is) once said that a clean house is the sign of a misspent life.

This may be true. Certainly, there are more significant things one could be doing than sweeping floors.

But, I’ll tell you this. I’m sort of enjoying my currently—quite possibly temporarily—orderly house.

I was chatting over the last couple of days with various people who have been looking at the house next door. It’s recently gone on the market, and a lot of folks seem to be interested in it. It’s in a prime location, doesn’t need much work, and the price is pretty good. The realtors all seem to think it’s going to sell quickly.

The would-be purchasers have all had the usual questions. Do you like the neighborhood? How long has the house been empty? Is there anything wrong with it? And, because we live on the water, what about flooding?

What’s interesting to me is they almost all say very complimentary things about our house.

Mostly, I see the fogged window panes that need replacing and the parts of the lawn that are mostly weeds and the cracks in the driveway and the treehouse that needs drastic renovation.

Their enthusiasm has caused me to take a good look at it again.

And I’ve realized how far we’ve come since we moved into Casa Lagarto. Yes, there is still a long way to go. But. . .a new roof, the river rocks in all the flower beds, a front door instead of plywood, a roof on the dock, all the exterior trim painted, a new a/c system, new carpet in three rooms, furniture for the master bedroom, furniture for the guest room, the whole interior painted, a kitchen sink, a bathroom sink, two termite-damaged walls replaced.

That’s a lot.

And. . .there are the results of my hour-a-day cleaning and hour-a-day yard work.

At the moment, however long it lasts, there’s no clutter and no dust. The driveway and sidewalks are edged, the flower beds weeded. There are some leaves—because the dang Wizard of Oz trees shed from October to March—but the bulk of them have been raked and mowed and handled. The ligustrum has been trimmed. And the pittosporum.

We’re looking pretty good.

Inside and out.

It’s a miracle.

I plan to enjoy it while it lasts. (Check back with me next week!)

You just never know…

What you may come to.

I spent part of the last two days vacuuming a ceiling.

Let me say that again.

I spent part of the last two days vacuuming a ceiling.

This is not a sentence I thought I would ever write in my life.

Certainly, with any vacuum I’ve ever had up until now, it would have been impossible to write it with any degree of truth. I have a central vacuum now, however, so there’s a long, LONG hose and many attachments. Hence, vacuuming a ceiling is a possibility.

In my laundry room—which is “unfinished” to a large extent—it just suddenly seemed like a good idea. The room has—I guess they call it a dropped ceiling or a suspended ceiling. So, it has these tiles—which surely need to be replaced as they have not stood up well to some leaks prior to our ownership. Trouble is, they don’t all need to be replaced—only I can’t find any matching tiles so the whole thing is just one of the million or so items on the To Do list.

In the meantime, I thought I would turn my attention to cleaning the laundry room in my one-hour-a-day plan. While I was at it, I vacuumed the tiles. I just stuck the brush attachment on the end of the wand and ran the whole thing over the tiles.

Darned if they don’t look better. (Not good, mind you. Just better.)

The whole time I was doing it, however, I was in a state of bemusement because I was vacuuming the ceiling!

And, you know? I expect I may be vacuuming other ceilings eventually. It’s an old house with a crow’s foot texture on the ceiling in all the other rooms. Looks like a dust catcher to me.

On the one hand, I feel nostalgic for the days when I kept the vacuum on the floor. On the other, well, it amused me quite a bit—and provided a blog post, so, hey!

You really just never know.

Like magic

Both of these tips.

If you are a U.S. citizen and you voted already—today or in the last few weeks—thanks! And congratulations for taking part in the democratic process!

If you haven’t voted yet, what are you sitting around reading blogs for? Get up, get out, and get to the polls!

First tip for this Tuesday is use it or lose it.

Then, in a quick trip from the sublime to the ridiculous—or, at least, the mundane—the second tip is related to yesterday’s post about my cleaning miracle.

Just thought I’d take a minute to alert you to a handy-dandy product called the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I suspect I may own some shares of a mutual fund that may own some shares of Procter & Gamble. I get bored to death reading fund prospectus,* so I’m not entirely sure. It’s certainly possible, though.

However, my purpose here is your profit, not mine.

The profit in the Magic Eraser is that it really is like magic.

I’d seen the ads, of course, but I figured it was just another attempt to get me to spend money. When one of my cousin’s (once removed) suggested it as a way to clean grout, I thought I’d give it a try.

Well!

It’s kind of amazing. First of all, it cleans with just water. No chemicals at all. How cool is that? And secondly, it really does clean. You just moisten it a bit and run it over whatever you’re cleaning, and wowee!. I’m sure it works better on some surfaces than others, but I can tell you—white grout? Excellent! Melamine shelves and cabinet doors? Perfect!

The only downside that I can see is that the “sponges” don’t last too long. They have a terrific effect while they do, though. (I’ve heard they aren’t too good for certain painted and polished surfaces. As with anything, please use caution. Test in an inconspicuous spot before going hog wild.)

Anyway, it seems to be a useful product. Thought you might like to know.

* You probably thought the plural of “prospectus” was “prospecti.” Or, possibly, “prospectuses.” Me, too. Turns out we were both wrong. Something to do with the fourth declension (your guess is as good as mine) in Latin. The plural of “prospectus” is “prospectus.” (And they say English is hard to learn.)

Miracle in the making

My hour of power.

For a week now, I’ve been implementing a new approach to housework.

One hour a day.

I pick a room, start in one corner, and proceed all the way around it cleaning everything in sight—whether it needs it or not. For exactly one hour. When the hour is up, I’m done.

It seems to be working pretty well. My house is as clean as it has ever been since we moved into it. Now, it should be noted that I had done a big housecleaning push before I started this hour a day method. Company was anticipated, so, you know—extra cleaning. Honored guest, and all that.

So, my goal is to keep the house in that condition without killing myself.

So far, so good.

I’ve also been doing an hour of yard work a day—for the same reason.

Seven days have passed since I began this experiment. That’s exactly one-third of the time “they” say it takes to create a new habit. I don’t know for sure if it’s going to last, or if an hour a day is going to be enough. (My house is a lot bigger than the apartment I used to live in.) I might need to devote extra time periodically. Almost certainly, big projects—like cleaning out closets, etc.—will require extra effort. For general, ordinary cleaning, however, this is promising.

It’s enough time to make some progress, but not enough time to exhaust me or bore me silly. (I started out silly, so. . .that’s probably not a fair criterion.)

You might want to try this. Maybe you can’t spare an hour a day. You might manage a half hour or fifteen minutes. There’s definitely something pleasant about hanging out in an environment you know is clean.

It’s kind of a miracle.

An unending supply of dirt

Actual dirt.

Not gossip or scandal or anything like that.

I’m talking about dirt. Erosion. Because I have been noticing for some time now that the yard is trying to take back the driveway. Little by little, the lawn has crept over the edge.

We’ll set aside the fact that I have plenty of bare spots on the lawn itself—where, you know, if the grass wanted to move somewhere, there would be little, if any, resistance. Or, wait. Let’s not. Set it aside, I mean. What possesses the grass to try to grow over and through the concrete driveway instead of turning around and nestling into the nice soft dirt?! I think the grass might be in cahoots with my Wizard of Oz trees. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but, seriously, what possible benign reason could there be for trying to grow on concrete?

Anyway, I’ve been noticing this encroachment, and yesterday, I decided I would have to do something about it. I started out using my weed whacker as an edger—a task at which it is surprisingly effective. However, there came a point on the driveway where I was going to have to trim back about a foot (a foot!) of dirt and grass.

Enter the grubbing hoe. The grubbing hoe is a very nice implement. I like it. Using it, I found the edge of the driveway again. And I dislodged most of the dirt and grass that had crept over it.

But I live in Florida, and the dirt is mostly sand, and pretty much as fast as you remove the side of a hill, the hill slides down.

An unending supply of dirt.

Next stop. The home improvement store.

I guess it’s time to get some of that plastic edging until one of two things happens. Either the remaining grass will put out tendrils and roots to anchor the sand, or we will have the time, energy, funds, and artistic sense to come up with something better. Meanwhile, I’m going to end that unending supply of dirt!

No avian fatalities

Fair flying weather for the feathered flock.

I cleaned my windows three days ago, and there have been no avian fatalities. It’s a miracle!

The thing about the windows is that they sort of act like mirrors. When they are clean, they reflect the surrounding trees and sky. The birds can’t see them. So, the moment when the windows have first been cleaned is the moment of maximum danger. It almost makes me not want to clean the windows.

Almost.

But part of what makes Casa Lagarto such a great house is the view. And you can’t see the view if you can’t see out the windows. (Although to be fair, I didn’t realize how dirty they were until I cleaned them. However. . .)

I cleaned them on Friday. It’s not a bad job. As long as the weather is reasonably warm, and you don’t mind getting soaked. I’ve got a long extension pole and a squeegee and a divided bucket. A little dish soap, a little elbow grease—actually, shoulder muscles are more relevant than elbows—and it gets done. The hardest part are the ones on the second story because that’s really the limit of the extension pole. The whole operation is shaky at that point. But, I persevered, and the outside of all my windows are now sparkling clean—with, it must be confessed, assorted streaks.

Could it be the streaks that have protected the birds?

No. There aren’t that many streaks. No more than on previous occasions when we did have some serious collisions. Twice, birds have knocked themselves out. One—an ibis—sat on the grass afterwards for so long that I even called the bird rescue team. I was given specific instructions on how to safely pick up the bird to move it somewhere safe from predators pending collection by the rehabilitators. When we went to do it, however, the bird pulled itself together and flew away.

It was a traumatic experience for everyone concerned—except, maybe, the bird rescue people who didn’t actually have to do anything. I suppose, though, that was a miracle, too. Just like the one that is keeping them out of harm’s way now.

And, every day, the windows get less clean and less dangerous.

Fingers and feathers crossed.

Aaaagh!

The unbelievable gardening accident that ended well.

I hope.

I spent some time weeding one of my flower beds yesterday. It’s finally gotten cool enough that a person can stand being outside more than absolutely necessary. So, I’ve been catching up on my weeding, a little at a time, over the past week.

I have these flower beds—although why I’m calling them flower beds when only 2 of them have actual flowers is something we can examine later. Anyway, I have these flower beds. There are about 7 of them. Two feet wide or so. Running along the length of various portions of the house, with concrete borders.

A while back, we bought some large river rock to use as—what?—a sort of ground cover. In lieu of mulch. I’ll say this for the river rock. It makes it easy to see what’s a weed and what isn’t. Because there’s not much else planted in these beds.

We have some larger, shrub-like plants, a vinca, a ton of canna lilies, a couple of spider lilies and a hydrangea. In the back, there’s a begonia, in a pot, sitting on top of the rocks, and a flowering shade plant whose name I cannot remember and which has yet to grow more than an inch or show any sign of flowering. Anything else green that pokes its head up through the rocks is a weed.

I like that. Knowledge is not required. See a green thing. Pull it up.

But yesterday, this lack of knowledge could have had some disastrous consequences for a baby lizard.

What happened is this.

I was weeding. Specifically, I was pulling up dollar weed. This is something of a losing battle. In a defined area, however, it is possible to eliminate visible signs for a while. If you are careful, you can also pull up a fair length of the subterranean runners. They are tubular and white.

So, when I found a small round white ball, I thought it had something to do with the dollar weed. I picked it up. And then I dropped it. By accident.

Imagine my surprise at seeing a wet and slimy baby lizard clinging to a rock after the round white ball—otherwise known as an egg—broke open.

Imagine my horror at realizing I had just played midwife to a lizard—and caused a premature delivery.

Imagine my relief when the slimy little thing dried out and scuttled away.

I’m not enamored of lizards, but they are harmless and amusing, and I don’t want to kill them if they can manage to stay outside—which, so far, most of them have. Even if they come inside, I try to have the MotH catch and release. (Haven’t quite gotten there myself. Maybe someday.)

So, I’m thankful that the lizard seemed okay after our mutual shocking experience.

Next time I see one of those small white balls, I’m leaving it strictly alone.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Category Archives: Casa Lagarto