Spring has made an appearance and with that, our annual cleaning of the garage. Annual is exaggerating. We clean it when you can’t set foot in there. I’m a clean freak. Big Daddy….not so much. He thinks this is a big waste of time but he’s close to the season when he’s gonna want to bike every stinkin’ weekend and pretend he’s a jock with his middle-aging friends. That makes it necessary for him to put deposits in the chore account so he can wave sayonara without a speck of quilt. And I do mean Without A Speck.
BD said first thing we had to do was empty the garage. This took awhile. With the weather being nice, every neighbor was out which meant they had to stop by and say, “Cleaning the garage, huh? Wow, that’s a lot of stuff.” This was true but you don’t see us standing in their driveway saying, “Hey, how come you still have your Christmas lights up and dead plants in the window box?” O.k. skip that last part since we may have a dead plant or two or dozen in various pots around the plantation. When that parade of smart asses throwing turds at our pile of shit in the driveway moved on, the drive-bys in search of a garage sale started. C’mon,, people, move along……nothing to see here, no dead bodies, just dead crap.
Next we started sweeping up dirt, leaves and a significant amount of rodent droppings. BD said no worries, honey, they’re long gone but I took precautions anyhow (like YELLING into dark corners to let Micky and Minnie know that I was in da howse). We loaded a few bags of garbage and more bags of donations. How many sleds does a family need when one kid has moved out, one is away at school and one is too busy to even think about it? Not five. We found a stuffed bear (what???), clay pots up the wazzoo, a screen to some window of which we don’t know and a necklace I’ve been looking for (what??? x 2).
We patted ourselves on the back for getting it done and had a couple of beers to celebrate not being slobs anymore. We’re reformed garage hoarders and there wasn’t so much as a chicken, rabbit or dead cat residing in there. Pat ourselves, indeed, but it’s best you not look in our basement just yet. All in due time. (Tick tock, BD, tick tock.)