Wednesday, November 4, 2009


Coming Home Broken
or An Update on Cleaning for the Cleaner

The best laid plans go awry. After I got my book printed, the next great project was cleaning my house enough to have a cleaning person do it. Instead, I fell on my front porch and broke the foot on one leg and the ankle bones (that's right, two bones) on the other.

Usually when you know you are going to have lots of visitors, Thanksgiving,Christmas, a party, you have days and days to prepare. When you break your legs all at once the game is over. People are coming to your house, wanting to help in any way they can, and I had no time to pretend to be the organized woman I'm not. Worse than that, we lowered our bed to make it wheelchair height, and that wonderful storage spot for boxes of out of season clothes and also often the storage place for a frightened cat, was gone. Not only that, all those other neat little storage places for souvenirs and junk we don't know what to do with in the bedroom were gone as well. The room had to be made wheelchair accessible, and I wasn't around to make it happen.

The big day arrived Saturday. Elizabeth and her husband, Gregory, and my neighbor, Ro, were here as we proudly drove up. They stood by and cheered as I gracefully skidded across the transfer board from car seat to wheelchair. Graceful could be an exaggeration. It is kind of a skid, a swivel, a lift, and grunt, and a lot of talking to myself, “lean forward, lean forward.” Greg and Fred wheeled me up the drive, across the lawn, down the dirt track beside the house, across the ditch newly dug by Matt, up the two ramps constructed by Fred and my son-in-law, Joe, onto the back deck and into the house.

Judy arrived with dinner, and she and Ro arranged the kitchen, Elizabeth and Gregory settled me inside, the across the street neighbors came to welcome me home, and I had had absolutely no time to clean for all those guests who, in fact, cleaned for me.

So here I am, home, with a lot of help from very many friends. And, guess what, I think I am as ready as I'll ever be for that house cleaner to come in.

I do not recommend this particular method of cleaning for the cleaner.