Rubber Gloved

It's funny how having the summer off can erase my mind of any creative or intelligent thought. I miss my blog!

I did find a new place to live, and we are in the slow process of moving in. It's slow because for peace of mind, I rented it sooner than I needed because this is a busy month for me. It's a lot older than many of the places that are available as rentals. (There are a lot of newer homes available to rent right now--maybe to save their owners from losing them completely?)

Our new home is in a convenient location, and it has some charm that newer homes do not have; however, it's not as clean as I'd like. So, as frequently as I can, I'm over there giving it a good scrub down. Long-time readers might remember my issues with sticky children, and it seems I also have issues with my kitchen being gunk free from previous tenants. On the surface it looks fine, but everything needs an extra scrub down. It's one of the jobs where it seems like it will be quick, but the deeper you get into it, the worse it gets.

For example, the refrigerator looked fresh and lovely, but I decided to give it an extra wipe down. (I have a scar on my wrist from a little scrape I got off the butter compartment of a clean-looking refrigerator. It took forever to heal for just a little scratch, so figured there must have been some mean beastie hanging 'round that door.) When I took the drawers out of the bottom, I found a that there had been some sort of red juice spill. Sticky mess! Worse, there was a dried, crusty patch of what looked like dried blood to me--you know from meat package leakage. I sprayed some cleaner on everything and left to it soak. What I assumed to be blood grossed me out a little, but I felt good about cleaning up that little hidden mess. We don't eat a lot of red meat at my house, and when I do cook it, I certainly don't like to handle anything that's too bloody. I wiped the sticky stuff out first, and when I arrived to the supposed blood, it wiped up pretty easily, but it would not rinse off my sponge. It just hung on to it in some weird congealed mass--just dangling there. I wish I could describe exactly how disgusting it was, but I can tell you that it made me gag and toss my lunch. Thus, another little mess to clean up. See what I mean? This whole cleaning business just snowballs.

Oh! And the carpets need to be fresh for my kids to mess up, especially since I'm finding dog hair everywhere. There is an extra fee to have pets. Due to the EW FACTOR, I should get some of that money since finding these hairs in the most random places (like the freezer or the ceiling of the bathroom) is causing me much irritation. I think even if I liked pets, finding the random hair would irritate me. It's not a dog that I know--oh my gosh! Could that dog have had fleas? Not that they'd be alive anymore, right? But still--gross! My sweetie is in the process of cleaning the carpets that the property manager claimed had been cleaned. Bless his heart.

When I gave my sweetie the choice of cleaning carpets or cleaning bathroom, he took the chicken way way. He thought that the carpet cleaning sounded more like a man's job. Funny since it's usually the act of men that's makes bathrooms messy. I've cleaned many restrooms in my life--once I even had the job of cleaning restrooms and showers at a KOA campground. Guess whose was the worst job to clean--men's or women's? The bathrooms aren't too terrible--well not since I left the stools soaking in bleach for two days--but there are some odd things going on. One of the bathrooms has a toilet with a plastic tank on the back. I've never seen that before, and I can't see the sense in it. It doesn't clean as easily and it's not as durable. Another strange thing I saw for the first time in one of the showers was a rusted switch plug and drain ring. Now, the house is old, but these fixtures are more modern, like stainless steel. Only it seems to be something that looks like stainless steel--a type of coating that has probably peeled or eroded. I've never seen anything like it. When I say the house it's own charm, these are not the things I'm talking about. Those are just oddities.

Soon we'll be all settled in and creating our own gross messes. I reminded my sweetie today that this is the 5th place we've lived in together--and we've been together 5 years! It sounds terrible, I know! We had some issues when we first got together where some of the places we were living in didn't work out, but we have lived in the same place for 3 years now. Nonetheless, I reminded him that it's 5 homes in 5 years, and I want my own home where we don't grumble about living in places where we feel like we are just getting by. "It's good enough for now." He agrees. He has a deadline of 2010 to get me into my dream home. It's not as far away as it seems, but some days it seems like it.