Another Round at Kilmurry House
Well, Disaster Cat has been off-line for a couple of weeks, due to the visit of her DH's mother. Now, my mother-in-law loves to clean and organize things. And those of you following the Disaster Cat story know that just before Disaster Cat had her foot surgery, she was experimenting with a web site that was supposed to help organize and clean your house. Or rather, help YOU organize YOUR house, a web-page that would actually clean your house for you would create the world's biggest net-traffic jam. Right next to the first web page to take off weight for you, while you read it...
Anyway, for the past month, my foot has been healing but very, very slowly. My doctor only seems mildly concerned. After all, it is getting better, just 10 times slower than it should be. It is now to the point where I visited the chicken run for the first time in about a month. I didn't stay long (it was raining) but I made it there. But even last week, that would have been out of the question. Although I can now go up and down stairs pretty easily, standing up long enough to housework was pretty much out of the question. You can sort laundry sitting down, but you have to get it washed first. Organizing and tackling six years worth of junk hidden under the bed, was completely out of the question.
Enter, my mother-in-law. Past attempts to clean together have met with mixed results. She has a lot more energy than I do, and she is an early morning person. There is nothing wrong with people who prefer to see the sun rise (without staying up all night first) but I am usually not one of them. This visit, it didn't matter so much, because all I could do was sit there and sort stuff anyway. Its pretty hard to complain (though I managed it somewhat anyway) when all you are doing is sitting down while someone else brings you lots of smelly, dusty, junk to look at. They have to do all the labor, you just have to decide what goes out. From the seated position I can tell you its easier to decide you don't need something you haven't seen in five years than I would have imagined before this exercise.
The result of these adventures is that both the master bedroom and my work room are now sorted, in plastic boxes and labeled. well, the stuff in the rooms is anyway. I think plastic sealed rooms went out of fashion a couple of months after the Office of Homeland Security got is advice sorted out.
When it was all over, I realized that once again, folks at Kilmurry House had lived up to their reputation of doing things backwards. If most of the world does things at one time of year, we do it another time. For example, most people bar-ba-que in the summer months. But my husband has never been big on getting outdoor grills to light (nor my house-mate). When we lived in Sweden a few years ago, we managed it briefly. But, since moving to Ireland, I had been living without my beloved bar-ba-cued meat. That is until we got a Franklin Stove for our largest room. Franklin Stoves were invented by Benjamin Franklin who had seen good combination cook and heating stoves used while touring on this side of the water. Saddened by seeing his fellow Americans still cooking over inefficient and smoky fire places, he invented his own version and then gave away the patent rights as "A gift to the American People." Can you imagine a politician making such a gift today?
Anyway, because the stoves have an open patent, they have stayed in used and been improved upon for over 200 years. They are now popular on both sides of the Atlantic and are "period" for our 200 year old house. These stoves are big, cast iron pieces that sit outside of your fireplace and open up to let you enjoy a roaring fire. Or you can close them up and let them radiate heat into your room. Inside, their is a grill, small iron arm and cook-pot. The idea was to let colonial housewives cook and visit with company at the same time. It still works for non-colonial housewives and their husbands. So, now every winter we start getting out the marinade books, kabob skewers and turning togs; just as most people are putting their stuff to bed for the season.
So, doing our "Spring Cleaning" the same time as Australia doesn't seem that out of whack for this household. Still, it was fun watching our house-mate try and light a huge trash burning fire in the typical Irish weather. He managed it, but only because the rain let up for a few hours. We do have garbage pick up out here, but its restricted to a couple of small wheelie bins once every two weeks. Which was no match for six years of under-the-bed archaeological excavation.
Now, I can look forward to enjoying some well earned bar-ba-que and enjoy the coming Yule Season...
More later,
Disaster Cat...at Kilmurry House where our Yule tree is taken down regularly each year, sometime around the end of Febuary....