Ew

I took down all the Christmas decorations yesterday. (Only a day late--do you think I dodged the bad luck?)

The thing I hate most about packing all that stuff away--besides the inevitable depression that results when I realize the holidays and their cheer and bright lights are done with, leaving nothing but a grim stretch of winter months to be endured before spring--is the cleaning. Because, you see, the surfaces that I covered with cut evergreen boughs have not BEEN cleaned since I put the boughs there, lest I disturb the dried-out boughs and cause all the needles to fall off, a la Charlie Brown's Christmas tree--whoomp!

I decorated almost exactly a month ago. A month is a long time. Long enough for some serious filth to build up. Especially in the dining room, where the woodstove coats all surfaces in a layer of dust and ash. The accumulation of those layers over the last month, along with the webs spun by the industrious spiders who really like the warm dining room, meant that I was not so much wiping up dust as scrubbing away dirt. It was totally grody to the max.

I'm not a fanatical housekeeper or anything, but I was a little disturbed at the filth we'd been wallowing in for a month. The only benefit to cleaning something so gross is the resulting feeling of virtuousness. Blackrock affords many opportunities to experience that feeling, because I swear to God, our house gets dirtier faster than any other house I've ever been in. There are all the pets, yes, and tracking in mud and all, but I think the house just manufactures its own dirt.

BUT ANYWAY.

I managed to get everything put away, cleaned up, and shining like a new penny (not really on the penny part) downstairs. And it stayed that way for two whole hours, until pets came in, people came home, mail was deposited, and the cycle began anew.

I can't be the only one who really wishes for a maid.