Tragedy plus time equals comedy, right? It is with all due respect, condolences, and shared sorrows that I apologize in advance for trying to laugh at myself during the midst of a Plague. Yet someone’s got to do it and and you may as well get the story from the source, not the gossip. Yes, I did toddle off to the garage to retrieve a wobbly step stool crafted for me by one of my nephews when he had to take shop in high school (you know who your are, Donn). Yes, I did set it in front of the dryer that sits on my covered patio and use it to climb up onto the top of the dryer so I could peer over the back side and see how many leaves had accumulated behind it. Why would I want to do that? It all leads back to the Plague. I cancelled the cleaning ladies after offering to pay them for staying away. It seemed like the safe thing to do. That left me with the opportunity to reacquaint myself with housecleaning. I used to do it every week, long ago when I was younger and more driven to finish. At one point in my life I even got paid to do it for other people. Okay, it wasn’t other people. It was my mother-in-law who had two daughters and a daughter-in-law living locally who were desperate for a little extra cash. I got paid; ergo I was a cleaning lady. Somewhere in the midst of time, I hired a cleaning lady of my own. She came every other week for years. Then I retired and told her I’d clean my own house. I did that for about six months until I remembered why I’d hired cleaning ladies in the first place. This time I hired a team. They were great. They cleaned way better than I ever did. They washed the windows and the window screens. They cleaned the refrigerator. They trained me to pay attention to things like moldy lettuce in the fridge crisper and flour weevils in the pantry. They humiliated me into identifying what I’d shoved to the back of the cupboards. They made me a better person. Then I ran out of money. No problem. They loved me. They would come once a month and not charge as much as they did the neighbor across the street. I agreed. The only concession was that I would dust my teapot collection by myself. I could do that. Once a month. Maybe. This sweet deal went on for one or two years. I was happy. The house looked spotlessly clean for one week and relatively clean for the remainder of the month. I needed closet space for Victorian costumes so I moved my old vacuum cleaner to the garage, covered it with a big towel, and forgot it existed. The cleaning ladies brought their own, one that worked better. After fifty years of cleaning houses, I never had to look a floor mop in the face again for the rest of my life, or so I thought. Enter the Plague; exit the cleaning ladies. That’s okay, my house is small. It shouldn’t be that hard. I’d done it before; I could do it again. The only problem was that I’d forgotten how. Well, more like I’d forgotten what supplies I had and where I’d put them. When I explained that to my son and daughter-in-law they immediately offered to buy me a new vacuum cleaner. I asked for something very lightweight. They sent me a stick vacuum that weighs 3 pounds and picks up dust from the kitchen floor better than anything. The only problem is that the suction is so good that when I put it on the carpet I can’t move it. So out to the garage I trotted to retrieve and test out the old Hoover Windtunnel with self-driving motors. I happened to notice that behind it sat a stick vacuum. Now I own two. One is still in the garage. The old vacuum still works great, but it’s too heavy for me to lift. It cannot live in the garage if I expect to use it. What to do? I know! Shove the Victorian costumes into other overpacked closets and store the vacuum in the same spot it sat thirty years ago when I first brought it home from the hospital. I’m kidding. From Target. Now I have a cleaning supplies closet with a stick vacuum and a buffalo vacuum.. But do I have disposable vacuum cleaner bags? Nope. Also, do I have other cleaning supplies? Let’s see, my old sponge mop head disintegrated as soon as I dipped it in water. Where are the dust rags, gloves, disinfectants, cleansers, and other supplies that used to be so near and dear to my heart? Gone. Drastic measures were needed. Amazon was called to the rescue. All I had to order were reusable gloves, a Swiffer mop along with the wet and dry pads you throw away after one use, vacuum cleaner bags, scented beads to dump in the bags so the closet doesn’t smell like stale dirt, flannel dust rags, cotton washcloths, window washing rags, dozens of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, Comet cleanser, toilet bowl cleaners, bathroom disinfectant, industrial strength bleach, furniture polish, and tile cleaner. I thinks that’s the list. Maybe there was more. Every day for weeks Amazon dropped off a box or two of cleaning tools and products. Buying was the fun part, the really, really fun part. I learned that for an acquisitive personality, even cleaning supplies can count as a collection. Nonetheless, eventually I ran out of things to buy and it was time to go to work. However, I didn’t know where to start. So I made a list. It included everything I could think of that needed to be done on a regular basis plus extra tasks, such as washing off the covered patio floor from where the feral cats left their markings. Every day I wrote down what little I’d done so I could be reminded about when I needed to do it again. Also, I did it so I could feel productive. During a Plague it’s important to feel productive. The cleaning ladies came once a month. If I could do one room a day, I’d finish in two weeks, take a two week hiatus, and repeat. That was the plan. I had my list ready to be checked off. No one would get hurt. On day two I tried to run the dishwasher using the new pods that were all I could order from Instacart because dishwasher powder appeared to be extinct. However, so is my dishwasher. Extinct. It’s so outdated I have to wash the dishes first before I put them in the dishwasher. I know what you’re thinking. “If she hand washes everything, why bother with the dishwasher?” I must run the dishwasher because it was added after the house was built and the pipes are insane. If I don’t run it, the house reeks of food rotting in the ups and downs of insane pipes. So I plopped in a pod and walked away. Fortunately, I went back for something in time to see the bubbles oozing out of the sides of the dishwasher and the sudsy water sliding out of the bottom onto the kitchen floor. Let’s just say my machine cannot handle the sudsing power of a pod and it took all the towels I own and five run-throughs of the washing cycle to remove all the soap. My water glasses have never been so clean. I ran back to Amazon for dishwashing machine powder. What did I discover? It was a hotter commodity than Excedrin and could only be found at black market prices. There were people on dark street corners wearing oversized coats selling boxes of Cascade Powder for $50 a box. Nonetheless, needs prevail and I went on the hunt for the last remaining boxes of Cascade Platinum powder on the planet. (Postscript: the panic buying has eased and I can now purchase a small box of it as often as I order kale, which is once a week.) Back to housecleaning. After two weeks of daily effort using the forty-five minutes worth of strength I possessed each day, it came time to clean the covered patio where sat a table and chairs and my washing machine and dryer. The first thing I had to do was take a serrated carving knife and cut up the outdoor rug under the table and chairs. No vacuum in the world had the strength to clean up the reside of three feral cats. I stuck two rolls of it into the trash can which I rolled to the curb awaiting next day pickup. During the night, some intrepid collector pulled it out and took it home, thinking it was an entire, usable rug. Every time I think of their surprise, I smile. Next came a thorough hosing off of the cement floor, using a power nozzle. I sprayed behind the washer and dryer. Waves of dust, dirt, and leaves flowed out but I couldn’t seem to remove a big mass of leaves. This is why I decided to climb on top of the dryer and have a peek. The sight that greeted me was not what I expected. The outside wall of the house plus all of the hoses and wires and vents were covered in a thick layer of dryer lint. How is this possible? Hanging a little bit further upside down behind the dryer, I spotted the culprit: a huge gash in the dryer vent where it exited the machine and fed into a hole in the wall. In theory the vent stretched under the house to exit at the western side. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t noticed any lint on my Hawthorne bushes for the past dozen years or so. It’s all been spilling out behind the dryer, creating a fire hazard. Something needed to be done. Obviously, the first thing was to remove as much of the lint as I could reach. Hence, paper towels, Swiffer wands, and rags were put to use. But you see I was draped over the back of the dryer, and the control panel was cutting off my circulation at my waist. I noticed my face was getting very hot and red. Also I couldn’t breathe too well. Aha! I knew what that meant. My heart does not like hanging upside down anymore. And I still couldn’t reach the biggest clump of leaves piled up against the dryer vent. What do do? What to do? The Hoover Windtunnel! That’s what I’ll do. I dragged it to the porch and used every attachment in its arsenal to try to suction out accumulated lint from the bowels of the dryer’s lint tube. Nope. This particular washer’s lint path takes a sharp turn to the left before it does a sharp turn to the right. Only an appliance repairperson is going to own a small enough snake to clean it out. And what about the gash that’s continuing to pour lint? I know! I own duct tape! It’s twenty years old but it’s still sticky. Duct tape is essential to life on earth. Everyone should own at least one roll of duct tape. Maybe two. If you don’t have any, log onto Amazon. They’ll ship it to you. Armed with duct tape, I’m ready to make repairs. The only problem is how to reach the duct. Can I pull the washing machine out of the way? Do I have the strength? And if I do, can I shove it back again? I’m not sure, but I have a plan. I’ll ask my son-in-law to do it when they come for their social distance visit where they stand on the lawn wearing masks and leave before they have to pee because they refuse to walk into my house, for my protection. They come. He looks. It seems complicated. I say never mind; I’ll call a repairman. They leave. Then I start thinking. I’ll wash everything, then I’ll try moving the supply cabinet. If I can move the cabinet, I’ll try moving the washing machine. If I can shove the machine far enough from the wall, I can crawl behind it with the duct tape and a razor clamped in my jaws. If that doesn’t work, and if I am able to crawl backwards to escape, I’ll call the handyman. If I get stuck, I’ll spit out the duct tape and try reaching for the phone in my back pocket. If that fails, someone will eventually find my rotting corpse when they show up to find out why Ma is not responding to texts. As my kinda-sorta daughter always says, it’s good to have a backup plan for the backup plan. Comes the day. I’m ready. Supply cabinet? Moved. Once it was out of the way, I no longer had to climb on top of the washer and hang upside down to reach the electric outlet. Therefore, I was able to unplug the appliances by simply reaching behind as far as I could. That was a treat. Yes, I was able to walk the washer as far away from the dryer as my hips’ width, only scratching the porch floor paint in seven or eight places. I’m calling it a paisley pattern henceforth. Yes, I crawled in, razor and duct tape on the ready, and taped the bejeezus out of the broken duct. Now all the lint exits the dryer, enters the hole leading to the crawlspace under the house and lands on the dirt. There’s no way the duct along the crawlspace has survived the ravages of time, but I’m in no mood to ask someone to slink under there and replace it. I choose to think of it not as a fire hazard but as a source of nesting material for rats. Following this exercise I was able to hose out all the offending leaves, and wash off any remaining traces of compacted lint. Now once a month I am able to repeat the process of hosing off the porch floor, including behind the appliances. I haven’t crawled on top of the dryer lately. Frankly, getting down is a tad iffy. My foot has to feel for the little step stool in just the right spot. If I’m too far one way or another, it tips over and so do I. I cleaned the house this week. This time it only took two days, five time-outs, three naps, and eight Advil. I think I’m growing sturdier. I don’t think I’ll rehire the cleaning ladies for awhile. I have a closet filled with cleaning supplies to use up first. On the other hand, they might make nice Christmas gifts.