Housekeeping is pretty easy, with the correct attitude: by John Agnew. A friend told me that she hired a man to wash her windows, and my ears pricked up. She has a three-story house with numerous windows, unlike my one-story house, but window-for-window, I can match dirty with anyone. If you take pride in your dirty windows it's so much easier to accept the situation, so it's all about attitude. Anyway, this got me thinking about my windows, and I'd rather not. Even thinking about them leaves me feeling tired and cranky.
I asked Kathleen, my favorite daughter, what she did when she thought about washing windows. “I lie down and wait until it passes,” she said. I thought that was quite astute, even if not original. She is obviously her father's daughter. When Alice thought about windows she asked our yard man to do them, and of course paid him extra. He was very agreeable and did other jobs for us, as well. Alice asked him to remove the Christmas lights from the shrubbery once, and after noticing that the strings were badly tangled he took clippers and cut them into manageable lengths. “Those lights weren't any good,” he explained. Alice laughed too hard to get upset. I hasten to add that the lights were unplugged when he attacked them, which was probably to my credit.
My mother was unlikely to hire anyone to wash windows when she had two perfectly healthy and unemployed children hanging around the house. She came from the farm and had much more positive feelings about “do it yourself” than we did. I don't know if my sister washes windows today, but she irons everything, including tee shirts and fitted sheets, so I wouldn't be surprised. When you lose your appreciation of the value of your leisure time, this manifests itself in many ways. I've avoided that pitfall.
My experience washing windows and mowing the lawn as a child explains my resistance to doing those things as an adult. I may be a slow to learn but I'm quick to remember. You can't fool me, when it comes to those accursed activities. You can use euphemisms to describe the work, you can hide the tasks behind anything you wish, but I'll sniff it out and think of something else I need to do first.
My friend said that if you dilute “Dawn” detergent and work slowly, it leaves no streaks - as if I would want to know this. I told her I would keep that in mind. I like to mollify her, as she might repeat herself until she gets an acceptable response from me. Sounding sincere is a learned attribute, just like having pride in your dirty windows. These things don't take long to learn, and they are really good time-savers, later on.
She is likely to ask me about any progress in the window-washing department, and that is another problem. I don't want to lie, since I have a reputation to maintain, but when you put your reputation up against washing windows you realize how ephemeral a reputation can be, and wonder if it is even worth defending. I recently went to two funerals in eight days (Old Guys like me tend to do that) and not once did I hear the departed extolled for washing windows. Do you think St. Peter asks about your windows? He does not, and I have that on good authority. Put something in the collection basket every week and you get a pass on windows.
I have a maid, Luciana, for a few hours every two weeks, a policy Alice instituted and I gladly continued. Luciana bends over and reaches up a whole lot better than I, so I just stay out of her way. She puts things away more than I tend to, and in more diverse locations, but searching for them beats pushing the vacuum cleaner. Self-propelled vacuums are better than the old kind, but you still have to drag it out and set it up, another task I learned to avoid, way back when. I'd like to ask Luciana if she “does windows,” but I'm afraid I might frighten her off, and I just can't face that. I'd rather lie to my friend. Who wouldn't?
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