The heading today is what my late m-in-law once said to me. All I can say is she was TOTALLY wrong. Particularly if she had ever seen the amount of work I put into trying to get this house clean and tidy before she came to stay - no mean feat when we first moved here as we lived in a building site on and off for years. When I had horses when we first moved here, I was still mucking out 5 horses when I was 8 months pregnant. (It made for a very swift labour as I was very fit).
I was laid up yesterday with some sort of 24 hour bug which made me incredibly tired (I had to go back to bed at lunchtime and fell into a very deep sleep for over an hour) and reduced my legs to chewed string, They just refused to hold me up. I had lots to do but knew I couldn't do any of it.
Still, today I have gone flat out from the word go. I have:
1. Stripped and changed the bed (with OH).
2. Got the stones out of and cooked up 8 lbs plums for the freezer.
3. Picked two jugs full of gooseberries (all the garden produced this year as we have young bushes) and topped and tailed and stewed up one lot.
4. Washed and polished the metal top of our Hergom stove, and polished all the brass bar around the top of it. My OH did the brasswork on the front, and I vacuumed all the cobwebs and dust from the inner bits of it.
5. Polished two old copper possers which were filthy with neglect (red face here).
6. Polished the brass lid of our big cast iron kettle and both huge Victorian copper cooking pans which decorate the top of the Hergom and we dry socks on (!)
7. Polished the two small old Victorian copper frying pans which also live near the Hergom.
8. Cleaned the sink.
9. Vacuumed the top hall, the bottom hall, the kitchen, the sitting room, the office and a bedroom (thoroughly).
10. Mopped the main hall floor, and then down the stairs and all along by the pantry.
11. Emptied 37 bottles of ancient and now undrinkable home brewed wine, and put all the bottles out for recycling.
12. Took 3 boxes of charity shop stuff in the car along with the other recycling.
13. Dusted the sitting room.
14. Put vast quantities of "stuff" away, either in the stables or in the Junk Room or up in my sewing room.
15. Finally cleared the kitchen table of detritis.
16. Got the chap out to give us a quote for clearing and cleaning guttering and windows. It won't be cheap, but the top blocked guttering is beyond our reach by ladder (safely anyway, we have done it very "unsafely" in the past and don't wish to repeat it).
17. Watered all my undercover plants.
That all took about 8 or 9 hours . . . Oh, I also cooked tea!
So, I have just about caught up with the jobs I should have done yesterday when I was busy being poorly. Onwards and upwards tomorrow, as we have guests on Friday and I want it ALL done by then. Attic tomorrow, and down in mum's . . .
Oh, and m-in-law - if you are looking down on me from Heaven - see, I really DO know the meaning of hard work.
