And Then There Were Four

Science Girl came home from university a couple of week-ends ago.  It sounds like she hopped on the Via, spent a relaxing day with free Wi-Fi  and we picked her up at this end.  But no, it wasn't like that at all.

We set out on Friday morning after dropping the Mad Wee Dog off at Doggy Alcatraz.  Our usual dog sitter Luddite Granny decided she would like to come with us so it was off the to kennel for MWD.  When we got to Ottawa, after a staggering 6 hour drive but a nice diversion along the Thousand Island Parkway,  we stopped in at SG's apartment to see how they were getting on with the packing.  Oh, did I mention that she was moving out of one apartment and into another that week-end.  I had already informed her that I was not cleaning anything so she had better do it herself.  This is what they in the fiction writing world call foreshadowing. We loaded up the van to get a head start on the morning.

Saturday morning dawned bright and mid-morning.  They wouldn't get the keys to the new place until noon but we and the other parents were raring to go and did not want to sit around waiting.  We emptied the van and the old apartment onto the front lawn of the new place.  Luckily, it wasn't raining.  I say we but I did bugger all.  For some reason, one of the girls had all the keys to the old place so nobody could lock it up.  I courageously volunteered to sit in the old place as the others scurried back and forth moving all their prized possessions crap to the new place around the corner.  By the time the girl with the keys returned, the others had managed to carry, lift and drag everything up the three flights of stairs to the new digs.  Yes, that's right; she lives at the top of a 3 storey walk-up.  And not just a normal 3 storey walk-up but one with a twisty, turny staircase so some of the stuff had to be lifted up and over the railing.  Bad words all round.

By mid-afternoon, we were done.  We weren't finished  but we were done.  Himself & I agreed we would go back the next day and put together a bed and desk and put up curtains, and, wait for it, clean.  I was mightily pissed off but I knew if one of the mothers didn't clean, it wouldn't get clean. 

Luddite Granny was put in charge of the kitchen while I tackled the bathroom.  You know, there's one thing about cleaning pee and pubes and menstrual blood off your own toilet but it's an entirely different thing to clean it off someone else's.  More cursing.  And they didn't have a mop (they do now) so I was down on my hands and knees cleaning this scuzzy bathroom floor.  I don't even clean my own bathroom floor on my hands and knees, for fuck's sake.  Extra cursing ensued. 

LG scrubbed that kitchen to within an inch of its life.  The stove had more than a year's worth of crud burnt onto it and the poor dear could only do so much.  How do people live like that?  I wiped out the fridge, not as thoroughly as I would have normally done but by this point I was pissed off.  Windows didn't get cleaned, the rest of the floors needed washed but we had run out of time and patience.  We left  Science Girl trying to put her room in some semblance of order and retreated to my aunt's for a restorative rum and coke.  And a lie down.

So now we are four again. 

It means more groceries and not always stuff we normally eat. She requests food she has taken a liking to while at school like lentils or weird veggies.  It means more wash; I could make her do her own wash but that seems wasteful because she wouldn't fill a load. It means I don't always have transportation - she works rotating shifts so 2 out of 6 weeks she's on days and the public transit is shit here so she has to take one of our vehicles leaving me to deal with the shit public transit.

But on the plus side, she does occasionally cook dinner and we have an in-house designated driver for the summer. And I have company to watch my pvr'd shows that nobody else likes.