How to be golden

Okay, so I have guests on their way. They're coming from the far south and will be hours on the road, but cannot now be interrupted from this end. Which means I have limited time, in which to do much.

Karen says that all I have to do is clean the bathroom and change the sheets, and then I'm golden. Myself, I suspect that this is not quite true, tho' a good beginning.

I am not at heart a list-making artefact, but none the less. Here for my own instruction is my uninteresting list of what I have to do before they get here. I will add to it and strike from it as more ideas and/or work occur. Please, by all means, move along. I'm only doing this because it seems to be what others do, so perhaps it helps.

Buy all the chickens.*
Change the bed.
Pick everything up off the floor in: the bedroom; bathroom; stairs; dining room; living room.**
Sweep: the bedroom; bathroom; stairs; dining room.
Vacuum the living room.
Make sourdough.
Wash all the dishes.
Move everything off the tables.**
Become golden.


* As well as having pennski and bookzombie to stay, I am also expecting m'niece abserdman to turn up Sunday evening with two dogs. She is en route southwards, and her ongoing train doesn't leave till dawn on Monday morning. So I shall entertain her overnight, with chicken. Before you ask, I have No Idea how the boys will react to two dogs. I am trying not to have expectations, on the sensible grounds that whatever happens, it won't be that.

** Um. This is a cluttered house, and much of the clutter accumulates on tables & floor. I entertain the charming notion that the house will somehow manifest other space into which it can all be absorbed, before people walk through the door. We shall dub this n-space, for Naivety. I'll let you know...

There would be a pleasing irony to this, if it were either pleasant or ironic

We've been having a heatwave, here in the UK. Not so much here in Newcastle, where it's been dry and sunny but not that warm. I think today is the warmest yet, to judge from my brief and early excursion in pursuit of all the chickens.

Anyway: dry warm still weather, coupled with bank holidays? The media for the last several days have been full of smog-warnings for most major cities. Specifically, warnings aimed at people with asthma and other breathing difficulties. Don't go outside, don't exercise, keep your windows closed, be careful.

Everything at the top of my list, everything involved in the whole sweeping-and-hoovering-and-changing-beds thing? Triggers my asthma. All of it.

I am doing a thing and then taking a break, coming through to tick it off the list before I do another thing.

Even so.

*wheezes*

Fortunately, I have the boys to supervise. They are following me from room to room, looking disapproving. Mac particularly disapproves of all this taking-a-break notion; changing the bed is his Best Game Ever, and he loves to help, and I keep stopping.

In case you were wondering

Should you notice that your previously hairsome cat is suddenly bald: this is because I have just swept up all the cat hairs. All of them.*

And I haven't even approached the dining room yet. Presumably it will in some fashion have swept itself.


*And they're all black. All of them. Mac may be tabby, but he sheds black hairs.

2.30, and all is not well

Soddit, I need an air. Just the one.

I'm going for a walk.

Almost a good idea, then

Actually, it's not much nicer out there than it is in here. Warm and heavy, smoggy and sultry and thinking distantly of rain.

But it's just as well that I went, because halfway round the hospital I thought "ooh...!" - and stopped off at the offie on my way home to buy a bottle of tonic. Wouldn't want not to have tonic. There is gin.

Also, just as well that I came back when I did, 'cos ten minutes later there was a knock upon the door, and that was m'guests, being early.

So: various rooms are not swept and/or hoovered, but the generic rule is that when they arrive I am done. This is why I start with the important things because I learned long since that I'll never do everything.

So. They came, they decompressed. I drank wine, against their tea. We are now changing into party frocks, and will head Durhamwards shortly. And I have no idea when I will post again. Farewell, O internets. Be good.