On Comet and Windex!

When was the last time I personally cleaned a house we were vacating? Aydee cleaned the Japan house and I'm quite certain we paid professional cleaners to ready our Norfolk house for Matt and Tammy Nathan. Definitely we paid Sophie - through the nose - when we left Bethesda. Lazy? We've already agreed on that. But I also like to view this 'delegation' as stimulating the economy a la Alexander McCall Smith's Mma Ramotswe.

If those excuses don't satisfy, we can always fall back on our very first rental experience as a Navy family, when we left Virginia Beach for Baltimore in July 1994. Talk about nightmares. We spent over a week cleaning that sprawling ranch house, scraping hurricane tape residue from more than 50 glass panes overlooking the back yard. We shampooed the carpet and scrubbed and polished a kitchen floor that stretched from here to eternity (this is when I developed a distinct preference for compact kitchens). We had big plans for that $900 security deposit.

When we left Virginia Beach that afternoon, we were tired puppies with chemically-treated hands. Five hours later we pulled up in front of 105 South Chester, me, Katie, and James in my rusting Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham (Lord, how I loved that car) and Mike with toddler Matt in the midlife crisis Mitsubishi Eclipse (red, of course). The key went in the lock, the door swung open, and our spirits sank to our ankles. Our new rental house was littered with paint cans and dustballs. We found a note from the landlord: Please forgive the mess. My grandfather died unexpectedly and I had to go to Virginia for the funeral.

So we spent the next 24 hours scrubbing and sweeping to get the house in shape before our furniture arrived. And to this very day we have not heard a peep from our Virginia Beach landlords. We sent several letters to them in Italy, inquiring about our security deposit and providing one forwarding address after another. We heard a rumor they divorced around the time our lease ended. We suppose one or the other of them pocketed our deposit as part of their property settlement. I think of them whenever I get to the "as we forgive those who trespass against us" part of the "Our Father" (The Lord's Prayer, for any Protestants in the audience) and then I feel awful because I have not yet actually forgiven this particular trespass. Obviously.

I did, however, clean the G Street house today with lots of help from Mike and tiny bit of help from Matt. The landlady refunded our security deposit on the spot and Mike is depositing that check right now. Which is how I snagged the computer.

More Museums

The Bogards were in town last week and I caught up with them in the basement of Union Station on Thursday afternoon. More than a year has passed since they left Japan for Bremerton, WA. Spending an afternoon with Beth, Austin, and Travis was an unexpected treat.

The National Archives was high on their list of places to visit so we headed there after what was intended to be a brief bathroom break at the Navy Memorial across Pennsylvania Avenue. Who would have thought a Seabee exhibit could be so much fun?

Rewarding Laziness

A Navy friend who hasn't moved in about a million years was recently deploring the steady progression of the concept of feeding moving crews from "what a nice thing to do" to "expectation." The crew moving his buddy apparently turned up their noses when pizza boxes appeared on the counter. The foreman cited a preference for McDonald's because "pizza makes us sluggish."

In my friend's eyes, this crew was appallingly rude. Maybe so, but the entire scenario is alien to me. I would never presume to choose pizza toppings for anyone over the age of six but that's not why we enjoy such cordial relations with our moving crews. The fact is -- insert thunderbolt -- I am lazy. Doling out lunch money is a heck of a lot easier than fetching food and a lot less disruptive to my reading and puzzle solving. Just ask any of my children.

Roland and his crew liked my Cash for Lunch Plan so much that they opted to pocket the cash and work straight through lunch. They finished the packout in two days rather than three. Thus, for roughly the cost of two or three pizzas, I bought myself a day of leisure smack in the middle of Moving Madness, Version X. Laziness has its rewards, in this case an afternoon at the National Archives.

Household Goods and Bads

July 7

Can you grab that cedar chest over on the left?
Do you want to open it before we crate it?
Better not or there's a chance I'll spend the rest of the week paging through cattle logs and musing about the dietary habits of Arizona livestock from 1932 through 1996. Don't ask.
Didn't you also want to take that double bookcase back there on the right?
Yes, but will you kill me if you dig it out and then we can't find the shelves that go in it?
Probably.
Then let's just take these two big picture boxes instead.
These were sealed in 2006. Do you want to make sure you still like these pictures?
Nah, I'll open them when they get to Japan. It will be like Christmas in September.
Maybe the worst Christmas ever . . .

Reading Comprehension

Mike picked up his fourth Legion of Merit yesterday. Three more, and he can will one to each of the children.

The citation accompanying the award is pretty funny -- the phrase 'leatherlike thick skin' springs to mind -- and is strong evidence that people in this town don't actually read most of the stuff they sign. Which is how lobbyists are able to tuck all those little treats into legislation.

Remind Me Later

What strange creatures brothers are!"— Jane Austen

This just popped up in the 'Kathryn's Favorite Quotes' box, reminding me that someone wondered if Jane Austen actually had any brothers. She did, indeed. Five, if memory serves, as well as a younger sister. Most of the brothers supported Mother, Jane, and Sis upon Father's demise. One brother, however, the second-born I believe, managed to work out an adoption deal for himself with a wealthy family.

I have lots more to share but Roland, Ferdinand, and/or Edwin have taped the results of my arduous research into a packing box. If I didn't know better, I would suspect one of my own brothers (the second-born perhaps) of bribing my Latino friends.

A Capital Third and Fourth

The last time Dave and Jill visited Washington, DC, we lived in Baltimore, Matt was two years old, the FDR Memorial was a work-in-progress, and the World War II Memorial was barely on the drawing board. So I proposed moseying on over to the newest memorials at dawn on Friday. We left the house closer to 10:00 am and got hung up south of the White House on account of a Presidential motorcade, the highlight of Jill's weekend I'm fairly certain.





Tourist tip: the benches on the east side of the World War II Memorial are partially shaded before noon. Three of us people-watched while Mike played Secret Service guy.







Kate, Dan, and Erin hooked up with us just in time for lunch at Old Ebbitt Grill and then we hiked a few blocks to the National Museum of American History.










July 4, 1:00 pm. We get situated between the Capitol . . .









. . . and the Hare Krishna Festival.








The Hare Krishnas had a pretty nifty float.








The girls checked out the National Botanical Garden. Some were more interested than others.










Some interesting characters arrived at the Mall while we were sniffing roses.











Matt and I had to hop over two dozen blankets to check out the Hare Krishna Festival. Dusk seemed to spark a lot of whirling dervish business. The genders did not mix on the dance floor. The males had a Grand March thing going and the females did circle dances on the sidelines. Matt didn't want to dance.





Barry Manilow and Aretha Franklin performed in front of the Capitol but we couldn't hear them.










At last!

Between Chapters

Cleaning a refrigerator strikes me as a chore ideally suited for the visually impaired. To test this theory, I pretended I was Helen Keller. Two seconds after I started pouring the seriously-expired contents of a Cultured Buttermilk carton into the sink, I decided to stretch my acting abilities: Helen Keller with a stuffy nose.

Is there a more nausea-evoking compound word in the English language than buttermilk? Let's not dwell too long on that peculiar adjective, cultured, with its dueling connotations of bacteria v. Boston Brahmin, neither of which strike me as especially appealing.

This is your lucky day, however, as I have not yet mastered the trick of transferring photos from my camera to Mike's laptop.