Monday, July 06, 2009

Monday Wash

Anyone besides me remember when Monday was ALWAYS designated as the day to do laundry? That's how it was in this house when I was a kid -Grandma always washed clothes on Monday -in the old wringer washer and hung it all out to dry on the clothes lines in the back yard. Monday evening, she would spend sprinkling all the stuff and rolling it up, neatly organizing it in the clothes basket to be ironed, of course, on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday, she used to dedicate to cleaning chores, Friday and Saturday were more for weekend preparations, baking, special cooking and yes, of course, more of the cleaning -usually saved the heavy-duty cleaning like scrubbing floors for Friday.

Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest and she did try to observe that with the exception being cooking a big meal and washing dishes then.

System. Yeah, she definitely had a system which is something I most definitely do NOT have! And boy, I sure could use one.

The weekend worked out quite well, overall. Mandy, Bill and the kids went to the parade in Osceola Mills. I stayed home as the thought of three adults plus the two kids in their carseats in that jeep -well, too close for comfort for me! I got food ready for our supper because older daughter, Carrie -her fiance, Robert and her son- my Prince" Alex (#1 grandson, ya know) were coming up for supper. So I fixed a big pan of bbq spareribs, got them all pre-cooked so all Bill had to do then was heat up the grill and slap a dabble more bbq sauce on them and let them just heat up with the sauce. They turned out very good.

I made a great big bowl of Halushki -and for those not of the ethnicity to know what that dish might be -it fried cabbage and noodles! It's a big favorite in a lot of the homes here of Slovak or Polish background and although my kids and I happen to call Sweden and Scotland our ancestral lands, we all love this dish. It ranks right up there next to Macaroni and Cheese with me as being excellent comfort food.

Yesterday, we got a new sofa. Well okay, it's not new in the brand-new sense of the term but it's new to us and really, is like new in appearance, etc. Mandy found it at a yard sale nearby for $25 and you can't beat that with a stick for a sleeper-sofa to boot, can ya? Plus the colors in it work very nicely with the colors and fabric of the two recliners we have so we're all set now for furnishings in the living room for a while. Now, the problem is figuring out how to dispose of the old sofa. That may take a bit of thought to accomplish the feat.

Sunday afternoon, Mandy took Maya and Kurtis up to her girlfriend's house where the kids spent the entire afternono, in and out of the little wader-type pool they have, playing with the litter of boxer puppies they also have too. So when they returned home in the early evening, both kids were definitely "too pooped to pop." (That's one of my grandma's old sayings.) Kurtis was wiped out by 7 p.m. and Maya managed to hold out till 8 p.m. when she bit the dust.

I finally finished the strawberry tablecloth (50x50 inches) last night. What a relief to have it done! So, of course, I immediately launched off into another embroidery project. Now I'm working on a set of six Christmas ornaments, in designs by Mary Engebret (I think that's how you spell her name). These are gonna be tricky for me because they are that nasty counted cross stitch and it is just a matter of time before this project makes me go totally crosseyed , possibly even blind and will most certainly bring out the very best of my "sailor's vocabulary." Why do I try to do these counted cross stitch things then if they can be that bothersome to my well-being? Well simply because I do love them if/when they are done and if/when they turn out decently too. That's a lot of "If/when" stuff going on there with me wielding the needles but I've made up my mind if my friend Shirley says this type of stitchery is so much fun, I have to keep working at it to find my own "fun zone" with the stuff then too!

Practice makes perfect, ya know. Or so they tell me anyway.

We just had a slight calamity here -thanks to a habit of Mandy's that she probably won't try to correct, even after the mess it made today.

She has a habit of leaving the scrub bucket filled with the used, soapy water sit, with the mop in the bucket too, no less, where ever she has finished mopping. In this case, she had mopped the bathroom on Saturday afternoon and left the darned half-full bucket -complete with the mop in it -sitting outside the bathroom door. On the landing from the upstairs steps -yeah, a great place to park it, isn't that though?

Anyway, being the stubborn, very obstinate old so-and-so that I often can be, I decided I was not going to empty said bucket this time. I'm tired of doing that, time and time again, ya know. So it sat there, Saturday evening, all day Sunday and today until about 30 minutes ago when Kurtis came running out of the bathroom and ran right into the bucket, flipping it over, spilling the contents all over the living room floor!

It worked well in that now the living room has this nice fresh, lemony scent, but created a lot of extra work in that some heavier items had to be moved to mop up the water that had run under them.

And poor Kurtis! He not only tripped and fell, knocking the bucket over, but where he landed was right smack in the path of the water as it made its way around the living room floor! So he was a very scared (thankfully, unhurt) as well as very wet too little boy.

And I am wondering if this episode will finally cure Mandy of leaving the scrub bucket sit, with the water still in it, wherever she finishes scrubbing a lfoor. Maybe it will and I for one, do hope so. But only time will tell on how effective a tool that will be, won't it?

Now, I have to figure out some dessert to fix to take to the meeting tomorrow night at church of the Women's Group there. Nothing major -just some little something that can be passed around the table and which will go well with the coffee we ALWAYS have. (This is a bunch of women who have predominately Swedish roots, you see and coffee with sweets is a necessity of life then for us.)

So I best get my act in gear and get busy with that. I lost the entire day when I could have been embroidering, working on my Christmas ornaments, thanks to my son-in-law who decided he couldn't go to work today (I won't even go into that issue) and parked his fanny in MY recliner -the one beside the end table on which I have my embroidery stuff, plus a small lamp there to assist my lousy vision and he was there from 9 a.m. this morning until about 2:30 p.m. when he finally moved his carcass to the sofa to recline! ARRGH!
(He has his own darned recliner and has no need for the end table so why do he land in my chair then, anyway!)

As close this today, I'll leave you with this picture of Maya and Kurt, taken yesterday by Mandy with her cell phone. I just think it's one of the cutest pictures we've gotten of them in quite some time now.

See if you don't agree.

8 comments:

Maggie May said...

Lovely photo!
Yes, I remember how my poor mum used to have to get up at the crack of dawn on a Monday to start the long process of washing. Was still at it my late afternoon, then there was the drying and the ironing & starching. Sunday meal was a big roast & took forever.

I have also had the same thing happen to me when DIL left a bucket in the bathroom & I barged right into it not knowing it was there. I cussed!
I get annoyed if anyone sits in my chair by the light of the window.

Shelby said...

No I don't remember Monday as washdays.. but I need to do it every single day with all these teenagers in my house .. ugh it never ends.

Alex the Girl said...

That is the perfect picture of your grand kids...too sweet for words.

Down here, MOnday was wash day, and bean day as well. The ladies would cook a pot of beans because you didn't have to watch the pot as it cooked...just add water every once in a while and continue doing your laundry.

We do pot fried cabbage...brown the onions, add a handful of boiled salt meat, and smother down that cabbage til its tender and brown. Serve over rice...YUM

none said...

Can you post the recipe for Halushki. It sounds fantastic.

a sleeper sofa for $25! Wow I need to start going to yard sales.

Jocelyn said...

Here's the part I can't imagine: being in a house with kids and sitting down for any length of time...from 9-2:30, for example? How does one do that? Wow.

I hope the mop bucket gets emptied (and not by Kurtis) from now on, too.

My grandma had Monday as wash day, too. My dad always remembered how profoundly her life changed once she got a "wringer" washing machine!

Paula said...

Now I'm loving the picture of Maya and Kurt, that is really a sweet one, but where is the picture of your strawberry tablecloth??? Cough it up, girl!

Growing up, we had certain days for the different household chores, but I for the life of me can't remember what days were what. Not that they didn't get all mingled together, but they were supposed to be designated. I grew-up in the 70's and 80's, but my Mom liked the old ways and we actually used a wringer washer for a couple of years. It was kind of fun and I can say that I know how to do it!

Jeni said...

Sorry folks, but due to being hit three times last night and three times again today (already) by a lovely spam blogger, I have to take steps to try to weed this out. So comment moderation AND word verification are now in effect on my blog.

Berni said...

I remember my Grandmother always doing the wash on Mondays. With a scrubbing board and a mangle and then cart it downstairs from her top floor apartment into the garden to hang. Tuesdays was ironing. Often the kitchen had clothes dangling from a rack across the ceiling because the weather was wet. I am glad for my washer and dryer.