'Spring' cleaning

It’s house cleaning week.

When I announced to the kids we were closing the paper, the first words out of Joseph’s mouth was, “Yes! We’ll finally have a clean house again!”


We have a room that serves as an office, but since I got my laptop more than a year ago, I have set up shop at the coffee table. It’s piled high with papers and books and junk that normally would be piled high on my desk.

Joseph won’t hardly bring friends over because my piles embarrass him – and rightly so. I think his girlfriend has been in the house once. She dropped by once when Joseph wasn’t here. I don’t think she minds the mess. I never minded when my friends’ houses were messy growing up, but I didn’t want anyone at my house for several reasons.

One was an old framed painting of dead birds that hung – and still hangs at my parents’ house – on the living room wall. Who paints dead birds? I have no idea, but I can remember taking that picture off the wall so my friends wouldn’t see it when they came over. My mom and I went ‘round and ‘round about that painting.

Now that I’m older, I have left instructions with my parents that if they should leave that painting to any of us kids for our inheritance, the dead bird painting should be passed down to me. The dead birds are an ongoing joke, and it will be interesting to see where the fate of that painting lies.

As for our house, however, we have no dead bird paintings – just piles upon piles, mail tubs, back issues, rubber bands, file folders, dust, a bunch of old stuff that needs thrown away, a broken big screen TV desperate for a new home, which I imagine will be the junk yard unless some technological miracle comes along to make it work, and a litter box full of cat poop. Well, it’s not always full of cat poop, but it most often smells like it is full of cat poop. We keep it in the “back” bathroom – as far away from human noses as possible – but cat poop is cat poop. The aroma is a permanent fixture.

Now, that the paper is finished, Joseph and Jeromy are wondering exactly when all this house cleaning will take place. I am anxious as well. I am determined to get it done this week, although bookwork keeps getting in the way.

I spent last week putting the final paper together and catching up on other bookwork that was about two months behind. Now, it’s year-end, business-end and tax time. I, for sure, would rather clean house than mess with all this paperwork, but since I’m “jobless,” I guess I have no excuse to not get it done.

I have a story in the works about what it is like to put a paper to bed – permanently. Last week was a tough week, and hopefully, I’ll finish the story soon.

I also want to write about the boys’ songs being played on the radio. What a day that was!

Today I read:

Matthew 5:21-32
Acts 7:39-60
Psalm 12
Genesis 29, 30