Sunday, October 30, 2011

It's Sunday

...I slept in.

You would have too, if you'd spent the afternoon cleaning gutters. And ironing a pleated bedskirt.

[Indiana Jones] Pleats! Why did it have to be pleats?[/Indiana Jones]

I fared better on the roof. In the last stretch, I had a total Slinky-the-cat moment. I don't know how you clean gutters -- catch 'em early enough and I hear you can use a leaf blower, but I'm rarely that well-timed. They're usually full, with a nasty wet layer at the bottom. I go after 'em with a couple of plastic putty knives, piling up and tossing the leaves over the side, each between-hangers section at a time. On an inside corner, facing into the breeze, I did so -- and the dry leaves caught the wind and fell up!

Oh, that The Slinker could have seen it. All her life, she was fascinated that items pushed off a high place always fell down. Fortunately for me, her experiments were usually confined to things the size and weight of a cat toy, so bigger breakables were (mainly) safe, while pens, pencils, thimbles, silverware and penknives all were treated to Slinky's Experients in Gravity, pushed over the edge and solemnly watched all the way to the floor. Just once, I would have liked for that little cat to have encountered an unexpected result.

11 comments:

Divemedic said...

Try a fabric steamer. They run about $30, and wrinkles fall out. I don't iron anymore.

Jim said...

Anitgravitation is always fun, but I'm more perplexed with the ironing.

How can a young woman who collects old Colt wheelers, who accumulates classic tools, who can do hours of unrehearsed testimony on filament voltages in vacuum tubes even own a bed skirt? Pleated, plain, wrinkled, or otherwise.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

I hate bed skirts. Unfortunately I married a woman who likes them.

Roberta X said...

Jim, I was helping out a Mom's. She wanted the one from her bed put on the bed in the bedroom and a new one ironed and put on hers -- reverse box pleats, it's got, in five places. (I also got to turn two mattresses, reattach a headboard in the guest bedroom and make that bed -- see how domestic I can be?).

I wore pleated skirts a lot when I was younger and had more of an office-y job. I took them to dry cleaners. Pleats are the devil's work.

Jim said...

I should never have doubted you. :)

Roberta X said...

(I mean, we moved the older bedskirt to the bed in the *guest* bedroom.)

My own bed is a platform type I built. The mattress or futon sits in a very shallow box, a bit like a bed on a boat. It has no box springs and you couldn't even get a bedskirt on it.

Drang said...

I wasn't going to say anything, but, yeah, the bed skirt thing bothered me, too.

At Alte Schloss Drang cleaning gutters wasn't particularly important, no broadleaf trees to clog them. Here at Neue Schloss Drang, I'm considering inserting a line item into next year's budget for one of these leaf filturrrs they're advertising, if only because I like the way the guy says "Leaf. Filturrrr" in the ads.

Dave H said...

My cat just experienced antigravity a few days ago. He was fishing for something under a cabinet in the bathroom and knocked a dust bunny over the top of the heating vent in the floor. The air from the vent took the bunny airborne, and the cat sat enrapt as he watched it float about 3 feet off the floor. I snagged it out of the air and put it in the trash, but he spent the next ten minutes gazing upward, pupils fully dilated, looking for more. He looked stoned, frankly.

Roberta X said...

I think cats are secretly suspicious of gravity -- after all, birds defy it! -- and thrilled when it appears to fail.

Matthew said...

Gutter cleaning?

Ladder, hose, high-pressure nozzle.

Fire away.

Roberta X said...

Matthew: Low-flying power drop: Zzzap!

I'll stick with doing it the hard way.