Work never ends — once you start

Now, that leaves me free to take all the furniture and the rug out of the screened porch, scrub the porch, scour the furniture with Lysol Multipurpose Cleanser, and the cushions, too, and then put it all back in and get it all cutesy for summer … again, it’s so hot, though. You know, I’ll just do the porch the same day I do the deck box, sometime in June. I could do it with my bathing suit on, and then when I get all sweaty — which no one wants — I can just jump in the pool and cool off. Problem solved.

That means I have time to deal with the inside. There’s been a questionable odor in the fridge for a day or two … or a week or two, what’s the diff … so I really need to get in there and take everything out, find the culprit food and dispose of it (usually along with the container, because I refuse to look inside at whatever’s growing — I have a life), clean all the shelves inside the refrigerator with good old Lysol Kitchen Cleaner. (You’d think I was getting Lysol kickbacks, wouldn’t you? Hey, why aren’t I getting Lysol kickbacks?!)

The problem with that plan is that we are out of Lysol Kitchen Cleaner, and there really isn’t anything I could use instead. No, I don’t want to use Simple Green or Fantastik, because those are for other things, and my fridge wouldn’t smell Lysol clean, although it would be an improvement on the current smell, I grant you that. Still, as my dad always said: If you aren’t going to do a job the right way, don’t do it at all, and although some of you youngsters don’t listen to or respect your elders any more, I certainly do, and my dad is about as elder as you can get.

And, I can’t go to the store for Lysol, because I’m almost out of gas and I don’t pass any lower-priced gas stations on the way to the grocery, so I have to wait till I’m headed to school tomorrow, in order to get cheaper gas (please, like those two words should ever be used in the same sentence). So, no refrigerator cleaning today. I’ll do it after school one day this week … if I have the energy.

I might as well not bother finding the culprit food, either, because then the eau-de-decay won’t be there to remind me to clean the refrigerator, and it really does need it.

OK, then, let’s tackle the laundry. Since the kids were here, all the sheets need to be taken off the beds upstairs and washed, and the towels, too, and the beds remade … although the air-conditioning hasn’t been turned on up there and it takes forever to get cool, which brings up the issue of sweating, again, so we all know I’ll cut corners and begin accepting imperfectly made beds and imperfectly hung towels, which will, later on, cause me incredible guilt and consequent loss of sleep, making me very cranky, which no one wants. So, I’m thinking I’ll just wait until I know the kids are coming again, and then I can turn the AC on the night before, and get up early and do it all real quick before they get here, in a much cooler environment. Makes total sense.

Oh yeah, I need to give the dogs a bath, too. It’s been a while. Gabby’s hair is so stiff she seems permanently surprised, and Kasey looks like she’s been lost in a rain forest for months. But, right now they’re both asleep, and I hate to wake them up — it’s the only time they aren’t barking. And, they hate having baths, which means lots of barking, and no one wants that. Plus, I did just take a shower. Maybe tomorrow after school … or soon.

Huh. Another Sunday with nothing to do. My life is sooo boring!

Vicki Wentz’s column, which appears here on Sundays, is published in newspapers across the country. She is a high school teacher who lives in Chapel Hill, N.C. Readers may contact her at vwentz@mindspring.com.