The Holidays…
Sometimes I believe that we forget that peace is a real option. It seems untenable because we aren’t used to reaching for it, but I believe this is changing as more people see how unsustainable war is. It is not the clean solution we believed it to be in the past. It never was. I thought better of adding my voice to the current Middle East War. There are plenty of people talking about it and even now it is too raw of a wound to begin picking at. People are still in pain and shock.
I created a holiday card for this year to send to friends and family. It repeats the statement "peace is real" in English, Arabic, Hebrew and Russian and features the sunflower, a symbol for peace.
Wishing you happy and peace-filled holidays. We owe ourselves a respite before we enter the year 2024 which is predicted to be even faster paced and more challenging than 2023.
I allowed myself to be talked into hosting Thanksgiving this year. The cooking wasn’t too bad, that was only two days. The cleaning of the apartment nearly did me in. It was an experience. You think your place is clean until you know you are going to have company and then you find yourself addressing all those problem areas you routinely ignore because you are the only one who will notice. The cleaning was a good process because it helped me to purge stuff that I had been holding onto—most of it stuff deemed too difficult to clean.
For me, cleaning consists of vacuuming and wiping down the bathroom and kitchen surfaces and steaming the floors. When you are cleaning for company, you find that you just can’t clean, but you must start rearranging furniture that you previously thought was okay where it was. Your cleaning takes on another level of complexity. Now I must clean the coffee and side tables and the things on them, then rearranging everything in the draws. I had to get out the mineral oil for surface scratches and to improve the appearance of the wood finishes. Not only did I have to clean and apply mineral oil to the wood surface of the wall unit holding the CDs and DVDs, but I also had to clean each disc case and arrange them alphabetically. The bookcases had to be cleaned and the books dusted and arranged by the author.
The blinds had not been dusted in a long time. So long that they were impervious to the gentle strokes of the lamb wool duster. The dust would not separate from the blinds without a battle. I had to enlist stronger tactics which involved more work than I anticipated. I had to scrub each blind with a solution of vinegar and water, one by one. I should have just bought new ones.
The guests come. They don’t notice anything. All your hard work is taken for granted. Well, ‘now you have a cleaner place’ a friend told me. ‘It will be easier the next time you entertain.’ The next time?
Well, it did not take long for things to get back to their preexisting condition, with mail and clutter building up on the dining and coffee tables. Now I understand why people just call in a cleaning service and why they feel compelled to clean first before the service arrives. There will be no repeat performance for Christmas.
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