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Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Neighbourly Love...

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It’s been such a crazy week at work that I haven’t had much of a chance to write anything! Yikes!

Tons of updates.

First, I am the absolute QUEEN of cleaning. Okay…that could be a slight exaggeration (to which my as-of-yet unpacked suitcase will attest)…but I actually had a really productive weekend. I spent Friday evening loafing around (truly, a favourite activity of mine). So come Saturday, my house was still disastrous. And of course my mom was coming….at like 10PM.

10:30AM….I get a phone call….it’s my mom, and she’s decided to swing by BEFORE the party they were going to….at 2:30PM. So my timeline is all of a sudden moved waaaaaaaaaaaaay up. I spend the better part of the morning and early afternoon in super clean mode.

In a nutshell, I did the following:
- changed linens in the guestroom, dusted it, swept and set out towels
- shop-vacced the rabbits (they LOVE that….), and vacuumed the basement living room floor and stairs….whisked away cobwebs in the process
- cleaned the guest bathroom – scrubbed off the NASTY scum, washed mirrors, sink, toilet and swept/washed floor
- full-on kitchen clean – dishes, counters, stove, cupboard, sweep/wash floors
- living room/dining room clean – dusting (puke), wiped the couch, swept and washed the floors.
- Main bathroom – washed out tub, counter, toilet, sink, mirror and floor.

I then started to unpack, but my mom arrived and that’s where it stopped.

We also got 4 cubic yard of rocks delivered on our driveway – 2 c.y. of gravel to make a patio to move our shed to, and 2 c.y. of river rocks to replace our trodden, sad, sorry side lawn. Poor hubs got to spend HIS weekend making our driveway passable (more on that later).

SO, after all this cleaning, and my mom’s quick drop-in, we head off to hubby’s sister’s house. They were away on their ‘wedding-moon’ in Mexico, due back at Midnight. So, we had a few surprises in store….
1) Our wedding gift to them was a patio set (Home Depot, the Key Biscayne set – it’s a great buy, nice quality and a good size). So hubs cleaned up their back yard, and set it up.
2) Hubs is a talented photographer, so he set up a photo collage of the best wedding pictures he took and mounted it in a really nice frame – we picked up the frame and the printed photos and he spend some time doing this.
3) Whilst he was busy doing all that….I cleaned his sister’s house. (Why stop when you’re on a roll?). Made me wish we had a smaller house! Their place was in a bit worse shape, but took SO much less time to clean (perhaps only because of super-clean mode) that it seemed like almost nothing! Wasn’t sure if the newlyweds would a) be happy to come home to a clean house, b) be weirded out that I cleaned their stuff, or c) be insulted that I thought their house needed cleaning. I’m hoping a)…..
4) My mom dropped off a gift for hubs’ sis and her new hubby – a gift basket filled with tasty snacks and some champagne. We set this up too.

When we picked the happy couple up at the airport, you could tell they were pretty tired, but hubs and I were pretty excited about all the surprises….so we helped them carry in their bags, and they noticed everything right away. :) Always rewarding to see hard work pay off!!!!!!!! I think they appreciated everything. It was fun to plan the surprise….(for the record, we had to go to their house everyday to feed their pet bunnies, so it’s not like they didn’t know we would be in their house….).

I have a fun neighbour story for you.

As mentioned previously, we had rocks delivered at the bottom of our driveway. This is a shared driveway, so now, in order to back out of our carport, we had to back onto the neighbour’s half of the driveway (either that or back on the front lawn….tacky). Our neighbour, whom I’ve long suspected of passive-aggressive anti-us tactics, decided that she should park halfway down her side of the driveway. Are you getting this picture…..the picture of our car, completely blocked into our carport, unless we back over the front lawn????????? (Which we actually had to do).

I noticed this witchy tendency of our neighbour months ago. Without fail, she parks in her carport. We often have people over, and they usually park right at the bottom of the driveway – this makes it possible to back somewhat diagonally out of the carport, onto the neighbour’s half of the driveway, and then out onto the road (and not have to move cars all the time). Well, the only time our wench neighbour (shall we call her WN?) does not park in her carport is, coincidentally, when we have someone over. It’s a pain, hubs would deny it, but I could tell….whatever though…you just move the other car and it’s not the end of the world.

But um…rocks? They DON’T MOVE. Not until you’ve made about a billion wheelbarrow trips in the slippery, sliding mud. So yeah…WN decided to block our car in. Out over the front lawn we went. Nice.

Hubs returned home later (I was out) and apparently he and WN exchanged words. Now, I totally understand property respect, but come ON. Is it really hurting her to have us back out over her driveway for 5 seconds. Grrrrrrrrrrr….you’d think we were asking for the moon. Anyway, hubs moved ALL the rocks that day and solved our problem.

Am I wrong in thinking this would be a nice neighbourly courtesy? That if you share a driveway that it would not be unreasonable to briefly pass over the other half? For god sakes…hubs shovels her driveway, shovels the roof (shared), he’s the one who was up on the roof in freezing rain chipping troughs in the ice to stop the leaking, I brought WN COOKIES. GAH.

Anyway….

Monday….was a day I’d rather forget, because I spent it outside in the cold, yanking crappy bits of weeds and dandelions all freaking day. Yuck. But my house was pretty clean. My bro came by for dinner that night (and stayed the night…I swear…B&B). He also put my cute GAP linen dress in the dryer. I think it might be RIP to that dress for me. Linen and the dryer don’t mix so well….unless my rib cage physically shrinks, I don’t think I could ever be small enough to fit in it now. :( Very sad. Men and laundry don’t mix.

Tonight, my dad is coming for dinner…and my brother has invited himself to stay yet again. Little do they know tofu and bok choy are on the menu…hehe. :) We’re having a dinner party on Saturday night….the theme of the night is vegetarian Indian, so that will be fun to plan and consume. Yum!

Weight has been yoyo....from a low of 131.5 since Mexico, to a high of 135.0 yesterday. Today was 133.5. Very sad starting point, but from there I shall go....

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG, can I have you as a sister-in-law? You are a cleaning machine. No matter how hard I try, that is never going to happen in my house. It's not a disaster, but not sparkling either. And I'd never have the energy for that kind of cleaning. It gets done bit by bit.

Oh and your neighbour... such a wench! No, it's not much to ask to drive over her part of a shared driveway, IMO. Some people!

UptownGal said...

Hey, could u post some photos of your bunnies?? I love bunnies!!

Jenny said...

Stupid neighbour. You should have dumped all the rocks behind her car!

If she ever comes over to ask for a cup of sugar, ask her if she would mind calling you instead. You would hate for her to harm your property by walking over it.

UptownGal said...

How did the hair highlights turn out? :P

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