joshuapalmatier

So, today I ended up spending the entire day preparing the guest floor for . . . well, guests. Tomorrow, my brother and his wife will be arriving, probably late, followed by my mother on Friday. (We're having the family Thanksgiving on Saturday.) This required that change the sheets on the guest bed and then move a bunch of the furniture and plants around so that my mom has something to sleep on in a somewhat private area, since the fourth floor is all one big open space with bookshelves sort of sectioning things off. So I started moving things. But moving plants usually means things fall off of the plants, such as dead leaves and blossoms. More things than you would imagine the plant could be carrying in the first place. So this required the vacuum cleaner. I'd move, rearrange, then vacuum that spot. Then move, rearrange, and vacuum another spot. Etc. Then I'd return to the first spot and see that the plants had managed to drop more material onto the floor. This prompted me to attack the plant and remove as much material as possible from the stems and branches and whatever (which put even more stuff on the floor) and then vacuum.

Which of course led to the idea that I needed to vacuum the entire floor. So after everything was moved and the plants rearranged, I vacuumed everything. But one of the plants must have oozed some kind of sap or something, because the floor near where it used to be was sticky. So I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the floor. This appears to have made the stickiness worse. I've abandoned this sticky project for now.

But since I'd vacuumed, I felt the need to dust. So I started dusting. I'm not a duster, especially with as many bookcases as I have, so dusting didn't last long, but I did hit all of the major non-bookcase furniture.

This dusting/vacuuming idea led to general cleaning and rearranging and the putting out of all of the food I'd bought that isn't in the refrigerator in preparation for tomorrow. Because what am I doing tomorrow instead of writing? I'm going to cook whatever I possibly can make ahead of time. This may include the first ever apply pie, some pumpkin-shaped cheesecakes with Oreo cookie crumb bases, and some dips. I really think I need to make the dips because dips generally taste better if they'd had some time to sit and flavor. I'm going to make 4 dips: my famous artichoke dip, bacon-bacon dip, beau monde dip (a holiday tradition), and a spicy dip I can't remember the name of currently.

In the meantime, my partner is going to make our own Thanksgiving meal. And sometime late tomorrow, my brother and his wife will arrive and all of the festivities will begin.