Let the Sun Shine In

Today, I washed my windows for the first time in five years.

I take no responsibility for this execrable lapse.  Five years ago, the city decided to dig up a perfectly usable main street — the one in front of our house — and repave it.  Mind you, in this city there are streets that haven’t been redone in the nearly twenty-four years we’ve lived here, and they look it.  (And feel it.)  There was nothing remarkably wrong with Main Street:  no potholes, few cracks, and if there was no curbing between sidewalk and road, well, welcome to New Hampshire.  In this state, that’s the norm.  Heck, we still have dirt roads.

But no, Main Street had to be paved, so paved it was.  Dug down to the bedrock, new sewer pipes installed, re-gravelled, re-hot-topped, smoothed down, curbing and drainage installed — it’s gorgeous to walk on.  But the project took two years, and you must admit that anyone crazy enough to open the windows when the main drag through town consists of dirt is more than crazy enough.

Then there was 2006.  We all know what happened that year.  Well, yes, the surgery took place in August, so theoretically I could have washed my windows in May, except that that was one of those times when it rained through most of May and June, and a good bit of July, too.

I was still recuperating in 2007 (another exceptionally rainy year, with record flooding in this state).  And last year I had more surgery.  Let me tell you, I was already reluctant to look out the windows in 2006, and by last year I would cringe every time I tried to peer through the film of grit and grime.

So here we are, a sunny Saturday in May, temperatures just right for working out of doors and — most importantly — for hanging the curtains out to dry.  So promptly at 9:00 a.m., I set to work, and worked straight through till noon.

Only one problem.  There are only three windows done.  The problem now is that, after two surgeries, climbing onto a stepstool to take down the curtains is unbelievably difficult.  Moving the furniture that’s in front of the windows, which before I would have done without batting an eyelash — also not to be risked, now that I have a hernia thanks to the doctor who’d rather go on vacation than hang around to make sure her patient was recuperating well.  (I mean, she could have postponed the surgery for three weeks, ya think?!)

But those windows are sparkling, and the curtains have that fresh, outdoorsy smell that you only get with line-dried laundry.  I really hope this weather holds for a couple more weeks.  I mean, I know we need rain, and like most folks in this part of the world, I hope we get a few nice showers in between our sunny days.  I just hope they fall on days when I have to work.