PROJECT - LANAI

137 – Sunday, May 17, 2009

Like an Egyptian Queen, there she was, poised between two motionless sphinxes, purring with all the regal contentment garnered by purposeful attention! Oh, not the cats, the Queen – she was the one purring! There we were propped up in bed with our pillows, she with the cats, and I with ….well pretty much with the pillows, settled in to watch a CSI episode before nodding off to la-la land. My muscles were already beginning to do the ‘tighten-up’ (even without the music of Archie Bell and the Durells) as a result of our spring-cleaning of the lanai – starting early in the day, I lifted all the furniture into the yard to await their scrubbing ritual while we attacked the pool deck, spotted and stained from the winter’s pummeling and the presence of our aforementioned feline friends. The spring veranda-ritual was made much more challenging this season, given the water use restrictions brought on by our extended drought and the accompanying prohibition of the use of our normal weapon of choice, the pressure washer. In the planning stages, as we approached just how we might assault the project, Cynthia had outlined a well-constructed strategy – first we would broom the entire area with a stiff-bristled shop broom I use in the garage, then vacuum the loosened soil from the decking using the Shop-vac (no restrictions on that weaponry), followed by a spot-cleaning of tough zones with ‘Simple Green’, the amazing elixir of the cleaning gods, and finally, a scrub-and-rinse ploy in a tandem hose-and-brush attack. The plan was executed flawlessly and, by day’s end, all was spic-n-span again in the pool enclosure. We got some sun, some exercise, and had the satisfaction of a job well done as we reentered the domicile and headed for the shower as the sun slowly disappeared behind the masonry wall of the subdivision. Now she was reclining, every bit the image of my Egyptian Queen, but did I feel like a Pharaoh? Only by the acute awareness that my asp was dragging!

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