Thursday, December 10, 2009

Clean Freak (or Freakin' Cleaning, take your pick)

"There is no point in wasting my money on mind-altering drugs, because the drugs need something to work with."


This thought popped into the Bag Lady's head this morning. She was, as she so often does, writing blog posts in her head. Sadly, a lot of the time when she does this, she is nowhere near the computer, and by the time she has finished whatever she was doing and is sitting in front of the keyboard with that little cursor blinking expectantly in front of her, she has totally forgotten what she had so cleverly composed mere moments before. Which is why y'all are so often subjected to mundane, blow-by-blow posts about nothing.

In a lot of ways, you should probably be really glad that this happens to the Bag Lady on such a regular basis, because otherwise you would be subjected to all manner of strange, nonsensical babble. Oh, wait.....

Moving right along (nice segue, don't you think?) the Bag Lady (returning now to regular programming, aka, mundane minutiae) is up to her elbows (figuratively. In reality, it's only up to her knees, but somehow that doesn't sound right) in cleaning and tidying her house in preparation for the festive season. She has even cleaned the light/fan fixtures in her living room, which involved rickety ladders and much cussing of design of said living room (it wasn't pretty, especially considering it was the Bag Lady who thought having a ceiling that sloped from 12 feet high to 8 feet high would be such a good idea.... giving nary a thought to the fact that someone who is deathly afraid of heights would have to climb a rickety ladder and actually clean the freakin' light fixtures every couple of years time she turned around!) But the light/fan fixtures are all shiny, the carpet has been shampooed, the (brand-new, $50.00-on-sale-and-now-we-know-why) artificial tree is shedding it's artificial needles with abandon, and the Bag Lady can move on to decorating the tree. (Honestly, you would think they could make an artificial tree that would at least hang onto all the little plastic needles until you touched it to hang stuff on it - the Bag Lady is going to have to hang a LOT of ornaments to cover up the fact that all that's left of her $50.00-on-sale-and-now-we-know-why tree is the metal to which the little green plastic needles used to be attached!)

Once the tree is decorated, the Bag Lady will move on to cleaning the rest of the house and doing some more baking. Oh crap. She's only got 15 days left to get everything done. Sigh.

22 comments:

Leah J. Utas said...

Dog, girl, that was hilarious.
If we couldn't laugh at misfortunate we'd all be lost.
So, an artificial tree that sheds needles? Now that's progress!

the Bag Lady said...

dfLeah - that could explain why I am laughing my way slowly and inexorably toward my demise....

Progress? Yes, indeedy. One would think that part of the attraction of an artificial tree would be the ease of not having to clean up all those fallen needles. HA. The industry has taken steps to ensure that, in the interests of convincing casual observers that the tree so prominently displayed is, in fact, real; the evidence is there for all to see - the fallen (albeit plastic) needles underneath. This, of course, will only fool old folks (like me) who have failing eyesight. A sharp-eyed youngster will not be taken in for a nano-second. Sigh.

Melissa said...

Golly, BL, I just get a cut-down tree at the plant store and have done with it. And then I bake a pecan cake and that's it for the culinary work.

But I do a heck of a lot of caroling and the like...

JavaChick said...

You are making me very happy that we do not put up a tree. And that I do not clean my house. (Oh wait...Did I type that out loud?) :)

messymimi said...

Agreeing with JavaChick, on both counts.

I gave up trees when I had 4 kids under 8 years old, plus cats, all of whom loved to climb.

I never caught up on the housework, and consider my perpetual puttering at it to be job security.

As for the line about drugs, I hope The Bag Lady will allow me to borrow that. It so applies in my case.

the Bag Lady said...

Melissa - I no longer carol. (Well, except when I've had a little too much spiked eggnog, and then it's mostly basso profundo - snicker) so I have to wow people with my hostessing skills. HAhahahahaha

JavaChick - I don't bother with a lot of decorating, either, unless we are hosting Xmas for the Rancher's family (which, BTW, I LOVE doing and would do every year if I could convince the rest of the family to go along with that plan....)

Messymimi - I have already had to threaten one cat with dire consequences for contemplating climbing the tree (yes, I can read his mind - probably because I don't have much of one of my own)
And as far as the line about drugs goes, help yourself! Personally,I think it's hysterical. (What that says about me, I'm not sure - is one allowed to laugh at one's own jokes?)

Reb said...

I needed a good laugh - thanks!

the Bag Lady said...

Anything for you, sis!

Anonymous said...

What? you didn't tag a beautiful little pine out in the forest on your walkabouts this past summer/fall!!!

cuz

solarity said...

I did the cleaning part when I put up the decorations for the house tour--now I need to catch up with the baking, where there are too many choices.

Mary Anne in Kentucky

Karen (formerly kcinnova) said...

You could always do what I do, and ignore the dusty blades on the ceiling fan! After all, it won't be turned on again until spring...

Don't scare me about how quickly Christmas is sneaking up on us.

Freakin' Cleaning!

Hilary said...

You do stress and panic better than any stand-up comedian.;)

the Bag Lady said...

Cuzzie - I know, I know - what was I thinking!? :)

Mary Anne in Kentucky - I work best under pressure.... *snicker*

kcinnova - actually, our fans get turned on in the winter more than the summer! We use them to push the heat from the wood stove down from the ceiling, so I had to get the woofies off!

Hilary - aw, thanks! :)

Miz said...

totally laughing as well.
and yes
kindasorta glad I do hanukkah.
no tree.
now, if I could only find my freakin menorah!

the Bag Lady said...

Miz - is it too late for me to convert? :)

Geosomin said...

Hee...I have the oddes image of your tree...hope your tree isn't too charlie browny :)
I thought the point of a fake one is that you *didn't* have all the needles on the carpet after?
Hmmm...

the Bag Lady said...

Geo - my favourite (real) trees are the Charlie Brown trees! The ones nobody else wants. I like to give them a chance to be beautiful, too!

This artificial one, though? Is beyond Charlie Brown, I think. :)

Crabby McSlacker said...

If I'm going to have to vacuum up needles I'd at least like to get to smell the pine scent for a few weeks. Thanks for the warning about the artificial trees!

Sagan said...

I think I'm going to buy my tree this weekend. Yay Christmas trees! (I'm getting a tiny one. The roommate can put up the ornaments on the top of the tree).

Part of the beauty of being really short is that I can't see the tops of light fixtures etc. So to me, they aren't dusty at all.

...OH GOD I can't imagine how dirty everything above my eye level must be in my apartment... eek.

David Cranmer said...

15 days? No problem. You can do it!

Charlotte said...

And I thought I was the only with that kind of blogger brain freeze! And now that you've cleaned your light fixtures, you want to move on to mine? And our fake tree sheds needles too although probably for different reasons than yours;)

the Bag Lady said...

Crabby - I agree! Wonder if it would look stupid to have TWO trees?

Sagan - that cracked me up! I never really thought about that as an advantage of being short!

David - thanks for the vote of confidence!! :)

Charlotte - I don't believe you when you say you have blogger brain freeze!! You always have such wonderful, well-thought-out posts!