I Can See Clearly Now

 Windows?

Yup. Nothing to do with computers but rather with those pieces of glass that turn a dwelling from a gloomy cave into a bright living space into which the sun can shine.

Which would you rather live in?

Me too.

But washing windows? Seriously? Not in my top ten favorite things to do. Doesn't even make it into the top twenty. There are forces driving me in any direction but the washing of windows.

Sure, I could hire someone to do the job. But ah. Would they do it right? There's the rub. As thoroughly as I would when motivated, which does happen, though not often enough. But this month - ta da! It's happening. 

Even though at any hour of the day, any day of the week, any week of the year I'd rather be reading, stitching, puttering in the garden, collecting seashells at the beach or pretty leaves at the park for projects yet to be decided upon, it got to a point where, if I didn't address the window issue, we'd soon be living in a cave.

Buckets of water were commandeered, along with Pine Sol, rubber gloves, rags, paper towels, Windex and a step stool. 

For the past week I've been washing windows;

 scouring mud from frames; removing, scrubbing and hosing down screens; evicting an army of  disgruntled spiders and any number of tiny twigs from the tight spaces in which they had set up their housekeeping and reproduction facilities.  At least they looked like little twigs. It wasn't until they wriggled that I realized they were tiny creepy crawly centipedes - agh!

My mother-in-law never wasted her time on the kinds of activities I engage in to avoid or defer domestic chores. Whenever she arrived for a visit, no matter how frantic my last-minute dusting, sweeping and polishing had been, as soon as she'd taken off her coat, she'd set herself to cleaning. Which always got me silently seething. We did not live in squalor! Our house was clean enough! But not for her. In spite of resenting the implicit criticism, I knew from whence her passion came. Having lost everything and every place she loved in the war, she treasured what she'd won back through hard work and perseverance - and she kept it all spotless. And now, those same hardships that had driven her from her home to the other side of the world are happening again to her fellow countrymen. I'm glad she's not here to see it.

But, back to the windows. They're why I haven't blogged this past week. But wait, you say. What about all those other empty weeks? Hmm. Laziness? No inspiration? Too many good books, too many stitching projects? Horror at the brutality, war and intolerance that parts of the human race are inflicting on other parts? Maybe all of the above, and then some. 

Who knew that window washing would be what finally shook me out of my lethargy? But there was another motivating factor. A few days ago, a long-time fellow blogger threatened to quit. I tried to comment, to say Oh no, please don't go! But Blogger wouldn't let me. Why they have to change what was working perfectly well is beyond me. So, this is for you Pam - Please don't go!

Meanwhile, though I'll never be, nor even aspire to be, the domestic goddess my mother-in-law was, there is satisfaction in clean and gleaming windows.

And in not living in a cave.

Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Baker's Man...........

Some time ago,I read about an easy cake recipe on someone's blog. All you had to do, she said, was mix a chocolate cake mix with a sixteen ounce can of pumpkin. Pumpkin is an acquired taste, in my opinion. One that I never acquired. Give me pecan or give me death! Nevertheless, I made a mental note to try it....sometime....then promptly forgot about it.

Since the GOCSD [Great OC Slim Down] began earlier this week, I'm not trying to make cake or brownies or anything that will make him veer off course. But tonight I had to make an exception.

Tonight the Bean's GF was coming over. She turned twenty one today. He had planned a fancy dinner for her, but cake had not entered his head. To me, cake and birthdays go hand in hand, so, with the sand in the hourglass relentlessly falling, grain by grain, I cast about for a cake to make that would be both fast and wonderful. And then I remembered the magic pumpkin cake. No eggs, no oil, no butter; nothing but a chocolate cake mix and a can of pumpkin. The blogger who wrote about it claimed it was so good she could have eaten the whole thing.....Hmmmmm....we would see!

It felt pretty chalky mixing it together, but eventually all the dry mix was moistened by the pumpkin. It didn't seem right to put no eggs in, but no eggs were called for so I put no eggs in. Into the pan it went and then to the oven.

Half an hour later we had a cake for the birthday girl, which was the object of the exercise. It looked like a cake. It tasted chocolatey. It was edible. Mercifully, you could not taste the pumpkin. Served with a large helping of vanilla ice cream, and blackberry sauce, it filled the bill..... But I wouldn't be tempted to eat the whole thing. There'll be no encores. It was an interesting experiment.......but, next time I'll stick to the tried and trues!