Oh, gosh, I’ve had a busy weekend. You see, my husband spent his summer building us a beautiful new sundeck. In the process, our yard turned into a construction zone. Usually, he or I (or a son if they’re home) “blow\/s”\u00a0the driveway with the leaf blower following the municipality’s annual spring street cleaning. But this year, because my mother-in-law passed away and then My Liege began the deconstruction of the old sundeck, we didn’t get around to cleaning the driveway. Therefore, it was a huge mess. Not just your typical leftover winter gravel, dust and grime, but grime and dirt and gunk and sawdust and composite-board dust and you-name-it was all over half of the driveway (it’s a two-ended beast) and also in a little patio\/courtyard area where My Liege had set up his “workshop.” Clever moi, I thought I could just blow the courtyard clean of the grime encrusting the…not concrete, but whatever you call it when it looks like rocks. There’s a name for it. They create it by washing off the top layer of cement or concrete or whatever. I’m too worn out to try and remember what it’s called.<\/p>\n
At any rate, I thought that the leaf blower would get rid of the grim in the courtyard. But it couldn’t get rid of it all. I spent 3.5 solid hours in the hot sun (with a break to suck back four mini yogurts), blowing the courtyard and both sides of the driveway, then scooping the waste into a garbage can for My Liege to take to the dump next time he goes. Except I…didn’t realize there was a hole in the bottom of the garbage can. So God knows what will happen when M.L. tries to move it into the back of his pick-up. For now, it’s sitting under a maple tree with a tarp over it, because it’s going to rain tomorrow, and wood on top of the tarp to hold it down.<\/p>\n
During this whole process, I had to move leftover construction stuff out of the carport and then put it back IN the carport, because (1) I don’t know where it goes and (2) it’s going to rain tomorrow, the weather man says, and he’s pretty darn sure. So that created more back-breaking work.<\/p>\n
I collapsed on the couch and then woke up this morning uncertain if I wanted to give the courtyard a second attempt…this time with my new pressure washer!<\/p>\n
The day wore on, and I did everything I could think of NOT to get out the new pressure washer and see if I could get it to work. Considering I was the one who put it together, there was no guarantee it would do anything. So I bathed the dog, did the laundry, washed the floor, did some computer work, then finally realized that if I did not test out my new pressure washer today, before the rain comes, I’m just postponing the construction clean-up (which no one but me volunteered me for; not sure how that happened).<\/p>\n
As it turns out, I put the blasted thing together properly, but if I turned on the outside water full force, the hose would blast off the pressure washer at undetermined intervals. I am rather proud that it only took two blast-offs for me to recognize the problem. But I created a huge mess in the interim. Once I started washing the AGGREGATE, that’s what it’s called!! Once I started washing the aggregate, one thing led to another\u00a0and I washed the vinyl siding in that area of the house, too. And, all right, took a bit of white paint off the door frame. That wasn’t my fault. I think a chipmunk had gotten there ahead of me.<\/p>\n
So now the courtyard\u00a0looks wonderbar! And this week,\u00a0once the sun comes out again, I will proceed to wash the rest of the house and the new sundeck. It was on my job list, anyway. And this time, the pressure won’t get to me. I am almost certain\u00a0I have the machine figured out.<\/p>\n
Oh…you know how I spent\u00a0yesterday cleaning the\u00a0driveway? Well, of\u00a0course today the leaves started falling off the trees.\u00a0The driveway will need blowing again before the first snowfall. I knew that when I decided to do the job yesterday. But I just couldn’t stand the\u00a0construction mess anymore.<\/p>\n
What’s your\u00a0least favorite\u00a0autumn clean-up job? (I assume\u00a0no one reading this is nuts enough to have a most fav, but if you do, fire away).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oh, gosh, I’ve had a busy weekend. You see, my husband spent his summer building us a beautiful new sundeck. In the process, our yard turned into a construction zone. Usually, he or I (or a son if they’re home) “blow\/s”\u00a0the driveway with the leaf blower following the municipality’s annual spring street cleaning. But this… Continue reading Under Pressure<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-non-writing-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindyprocter-king.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindyprocter-king.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindyprocter-king.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindyprocter-king.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindyprocter-king.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8067"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cindyprocter-king.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8071,"href":"https:\/\/cindyprocter-king.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8067\/revisions\/8071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cindyprocter-king.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindyprocter-king.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cindyprocter-king.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}