Give Me A Break

It’s officially spring break...or so I’ve been told. I’m suspicious that isn’t entirely true. Yes, school isn’t in session, but I’m still finding myself driving to 5:30 A.M. water polo practices. Some break.

  
For some, spring break means basking on Florida beaches in bikinis and guzzling at least one too many beers. This type of trip never really appealed to me and I can only fault my parents.

They weren’t “spring breakers”, they were “spring cleaners”. The house was scrubbed from top to bottom, excess clothing was donated and shovels and snowblowers were rotated to the back of the garage and exchanged for the landscaping tools. There was new shelf paper and even the dog got her first outside bath of the season.

Earlier:

In fact, it wasn’t even called spring break. My parents called it “clean up week”, just so we kids wouldn’t have any misguided delusions.    

Spring cleaning seemed to be a bigger thing back in the 60’s and 70’s. I rarely hear the phrase even used anymore unless I see a tulip, and the inner child in me feels compelled to swat at dust bunnies and push a vacuum cleaner around the house. It seems that not only did the house get scrubbed, my brain got washed in the process, as well. It’s quite odd, really, because the other 51 weeks of the year, no one would ever wonder if I were related to Martha Stewart. Trust me.

    
Only during the week of spring break do I even notice finger smudged light switches or knick-knacks in need of a dusting in the curio cabinet. During this seven day period of time, I almost start to believe that I might have too many pairs of shoes and that, if someone were to drop by, they would care if I had dishes in the sink.

I want to trade my cute clothes for a pair of bleach stained sweatpants and if left without the temptation of Facebook, the internet, Cable TV, Netflix, my iPad and this “Draw Something” game, to which I’ve developed a mild addiction, each Spring, I could be considered high risk candidate for developing trigger finger from overuse of Windex and Febreeze.

  
This year, though, may be the clean up week deal breaker for me. I’m unlikely to get trigger finger because I’ve appears I’ve developed another type of tendonitis in my thumb called De Quervain’s Tenosynovitis. My thumb has been hurting for weeks and I’ve been successfully ignoring it (who has time?) until I picked up my grandson a few days ago and saw stars.

The doctor called it “Mommy Thumb” and said it can be caused by repeatedly lifting a baby. We’ll have to change the nickname to “Grandma Thumb”, but I’m to take it as yet another sign that I need an actual break, Spring or otherwise.  

I have to wear an unattractive brace for a while to immobilize my thumb. Trying to think positively, I noticed that the velcro adhesives are the exact match to Maine East’s Demon Blue and will coordinate with all of my mommy “cheer on the kids” t-shirts. See? 

Perfect, since, you know, there’s no break from water polo.  

With no other choice, I thought I had come to terms with this year’s lack of spring cleaning plans. I’ve never really used shelf paper anyway and I realize that no one can see behind any appliances. From experience I know that the fingerprint smudges will return as soon as the existing ones are wiped away and really, does anyone eat off the floor, lick keyboards, the flusher handle on the toilet or chew on the remote controls?

The answer should be no, but in my house, it’s yes. My grandson does these things. It’s a good thing I have another hand and it’s pain-free. Now, where is the Lysol? 

How about you? Are you a bikini (or Speedo) clad spring breaker or do you have some of that retro spring cleaning in you? What’s your cleaning weapon of choice? I’m a big fan of those Magic Erasers. I just wish they could take out the trash. 

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