December 3rd – Cleaning Up

Today I celebrate that grand old December tradition of house cleaning for the holidays. Obviously, I do a certain amount of house cleaning every day, but there are certain chores that I do on a weekly, monthly, or even an annual basis. 🙄

In early December, I always tackle one particularly daunting task – the annual polishing of ‘the mirror’. This is not a typical mirror. This is a mirror (or one quite like it) that I coveted for years.

Back in the early 90’s, my ex and I built a new house, and moved in next to Phyllis and Randy. Our homes and furniture were comparable, with one exception. They had the sweetest livingroom mirror on the block. We, on the other hand had the tackiest mirror on the block – but that is a whole other story.

Fast forward a few years and I took my kids, my dog, and my kitchen plant and left my ex. I left the tacky mirror, the house and virtually everything in or around it. The kids and I moved into a three bedroom basement apartment and I gradually acquired everything we needed, plus the income required to cover the cost of renting a nice duplex.

When we moved to the duplex, son Mark, daughter Jen, and I spent a couple of days (nights) stripping the place of an abundance of dark and nasty wallpaper. I painted the livingroom and kitchen, while Mark and his brother Dan helped the landlord (one of my employers) to install a basement washroom and laundry room.

Once we were ready to settle in, I went shopping. My first stop was Canadian Tire where I picked up a barbecue and lawnmower. This was during a very short period of time when CT introduced plastic shopping carts. While I had no problem finding a barbecue and lawnmower to fit our needs, the handi-dandy plastic cart was not up to the task of carrying them to the check out. Two feet in to my destination, my cart suffered a catastrophic fail, the four wheels simultaneously folded sideways, leaving the cart sitting flat on the floor. In all of my ninety five pound glory at the time, I gallantly pressed on to the tills – a combination of brute force, mortification, and hysterical hilarity at the idiocy of my situation. I made it to the cashier, paid, and gladly took up the generous offer of having someone help me to my vehicle.

With Canadian Tire behind me, I travelled on to Richardson Lighting, a bundle of lingering nerves and the occasional fit of hysteria. I only mention this so one can understand that my mindset was a little shaky going in to buy my brand new livingroom mirror.

I entered a sparkling, twinkling, brilliant shop of lights and lamps – all reflected by hundreds of wall mounted mirrors. One quick trip around the shop and I picked out my mirror – very comparable to Phyllis’s pride and joy. A clerk approached me, ordered a mirror from the back warehouse to be brought to the cash-out area and we proceeded to complete the purchase of my dream mirror. The warehouse clerk arrived with NINE cartons. I was not expecting this turn of events and at this point I was beyond considering the skill it was going to take to get this performance up on our livingroom wall – much less the time and effort it was going to take to keep it clean and sparkly.

Fortunately, son Dan was home when I arrived. For a fifteen year old, he did an admirable job of assembling the lawn mower and barbecue. He also got ‘the mirror’ hung, although some of the language he used was rather less admirable.

At the end of the day, I had my mirror and when I moved to husband Dan’s house a couple of years later the mirror came with me. Son Dan had moved across the province by then but husband Dan did a likewise admirable job of hanging the mirror.

Twenty some years later, ‘the mirror’ hangs on our wall and comes down once a year for December holiday cleaning. Yesterday was my polishing of the mirror day so today I celebrate that it is over and done! Once more my mirror sparkles and shines the way that it is meant to.

I still have cleaning to be done before I am ready for the holidays but it is all down hill from here. 😉

That is all for today, folks. Take care and have a great day!