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No longer on the river and, again, an empty nester. Back to living on Fleming Island and making some more friends!

Monday, June 3, 2013

Tales of My Duster

Today I was sad to not be getting ready and out the door for Bible study but we are on recess now for a couple months. It seems Pastor is yet busy with every member visits and Michael needs to direct his attention to the preschool and VBS. Rumor has it we might resume after VBS is wrapped up, which will be fine with us! Now we will have the abbreviated study on Sunday morning before church and one at Victory. Plus, those I will get in Manitowoc!

My duster was scheduled to come over today to do some dusting and cleaning up for me, expected at 11:00. Now, I have been doing this for a while already and know her habits fairly well. When she called in the morning, I had guessed what she was going to ask me. "Would it be okay if I come this afternoon?" Without being cruel, I was careful to not mask my annoyance, telling her I knew this would happen. It happens every time! There was no time crunch but she is the one who is in desperate need of the money, and me who ends up irritated by her lack of time tracking skills.

She often tells me about the discussions she has with her boss, how he is less than merciful to her about her time tracking and being putzy with her work. She does thorough work, I knew that going in, but sometimes it doesn't require time, it requires efficiency. Marlena was in the Navy so knows how to get things spit polished, but in her position, time is often of the essence!

So, anyway, she said she would be here at 1:30 but showed up around 2:15. As a peace offering, she brought me food such as cole slaw, spanakopita, tuna salad, and three bean salad. I know---I am sort of doubtful about eating this stuff, but appreciate her thinking of me. She got busy cleaning up the mess of cobwebs which had taken over my river room. Certainly having my doors open didn't help any, plus the extreme dust from the work outside on the sundeck made it worse. For two hours she worked in there, using the vaccum cleaner, dusting wands, and many cloths to get the room straightened away. Justin will have to come over and take down the lanterns for me to wash in the sink. That can happen later...
The Ladies' Group celebrated our annual picnic at Mojo's BBQ tonight. Twila asked the waitress how big the onion rings were and I jokingly made a big circle with my hands. I was not too far off! They are huge!! Good thing we all shared our appetizers

I had to leave home early to make sure the restaurant, Mojo's, had seating for us as the guy told me it was not their policy to take reservations. That would have been nice to know when I called a month ago to secure the restaurant for our picnic. That young lady said nothing about  not taking our reservation when she took all my information, etc. Hmmm...

Because I was leaving early, I told my duster she should turn her attention now to Justin's shower, as I wanted to make sure that got taken care of. Her last hour of the work was devoted to his shower, it taking a long time to get the soap scum from his walls. 

At one point as I sat at my desk, I heard this horrible shrieking sound and realized it was the water alarm going off. She had gotten water on the floor when cleaning the shower which set off the alarm under Justin's toilet. She asked what she should do, thinking it was a smoke alarm, but I asked her to hand it to me. She yelled, "Make it stop!" as I took a cloth from the sink and wiped the water off of it. We know now that it works!  She is coming back this afternoon to finish up a few things that didn't get attention today. It is always so nice to have things cleaned up!