Another Busy Wednesday!

Wednesday, June 29th.

There was quite a bit happening on Wednesday.

I’m did a little house cleaning and laundry folding…

I had a video appointment with my nutritionist around 3pm…

I planned to fix dinner, if I wasn’t in too much pain from cleaning…

I was also hoping to spend some time in my garden watering and dead-heading flowers, as well as, having my coffee in the garden with Jason, before starting dinner.

Getting ready for the cleaning fairy

We have a cleaning fairy that visits once per month and she will be here on Friday, so I’m working towards getting ready for her.

She’s still new to us, she just started in January but I’m so grateful for her help and feel so lucky to have her.

Summer non-vacation

As a girl, during the summer, I began cleaning the entire house, doing laundry and cooking dinner everyday (Monday-Friday) around 10 years old.

Our step father didn’t believe in children being children, so our lives changed drastically when our mother married him.

Summer vacation from school was not for vacationing and having fun, it was for working hard!

Most days we worked on my grandfather’s farm but if we were not farming, I was doing the “inside” work and my mother, brother and step father (if he wasn’t at the steel mill) were doing the “outside” work.

The house I consider to be the house I grew up in

Our entire half acre of land was gardens, ponds and decking, created entirely from our mother’s imagination and BH&G magazine ideas.

We had 2 ponds out front, 2 ponds out back, a swimming pool and an indoor pond that filled a quarter of our largest room, which we considered a den/family room.

3 of the ponds were hand dug by my brother. Our step father would stand over him to make sure he kept digging and if he stopped digging, he was beaten.

Thankfully, John allowed the pool company to dig the hole for the pool. (Although, one of my brother’s friend’s parent’s made his son’s hand dig their swimming pool, which my brother helped out with.)

Our step father considered me too delicate to work outdoors, with the exception of the farm work. So, of my brother and I, I definitely had it the easiest of the two of us.

With me, he was emotionally abusive but with my brother, he was emotionally and physically abusive.

My brother was worked extremely hard and beaten often.

Where as, I was in the house, “whistling as I worked” and imagining and acting out “commercials” for all the cleaning supplies I used. Lol

No, it wasn’t easy.

We didn’t have any free time. We didn’t have “normal” lives.

We really weren’t allowed to have friends, (friends and their parents were vetted very carefully and held to very high standards) so it was lonely and I was very afraid of not completing my work or not completing it well enough but I COULD use my imagination as I worked.

As long as, I completed my chores and they were “up to snuff”, I wasn’t beaten or punished.

Although, I did get in trouble a lot and yelled at by my mother because no matter how hard to tried to put all my mother’s knick knacks and decor back EXACTLY as she had it, she always said I was “rearranging her things”.

It got to the point that I would make myself a map of where each item was, but I STILL (apparently) “rearranged” her things. Ugh

Needless to say, it’s been my life long dream to be able to have a cleaning lady.

My original dream was, of course, to be able to afford a cleaning lady once per week but I’m extremely happy just to be able to have someone to help out once per month.

I try to just get things ready for her by putting away the extra things that have accumulated over the course of a month, have the cleaning supplies ready and sitting out, having the clean sheets and blankets ready…

and the morning that she is scheduled to come, I strip the bed or beds, set the correct sheets and quilts on the correct bed and place the correct pillow case with the correct pillow.

A sense of accomplishment

I feel like I a lot done today!

I cleaned all the bathroom vanities and sinks. Folded lots of sheets and towels. Put towels away. Did dishes. Spent time in my garden. and fixed a yummy dinner!