Productive Saturday

Typically, my Saturdays over the last couple weeks have consisted of waking up around 10:30-11 AM, checking my computer for new emails or new fantasy football news, checking in on the week's worth of internet porn that I missed, and then lounging around the house watching Tivo until Amy gets home from work to lecture me on my complete and utter laziness.

This Saturday, however, things were a little different. I still rolled out of bed and handled the email, football, and porn tasks (some things aren't meant to be changed), but then the cleaning began.

You see, tomorrow, Amy's mother and step-father are coming into town and to call the house unkept would be a bit of an understatement. My computer table was completely covered in papers and old bank statements; my closet had a mound of clothes about 2 feet high, as did the area on my side of the bed; there is catnip on every carpet in the house since Chloe decided that cat toys are also dog toys; and there are four cups of pudding that should have been eaten two weeks ago sitting in the refridgerator.

Something needed to be done and looking around, I saw no one else capable of doing it...since I was alone. I set right to it, grabbing my first mound of clothes and heading to the laundry room. For those that tuned in late, here's how I handle laundry, and within minutes the first load is in.

I head up to the refridgerator and pull out the cups of pudding that have been taunting me for the last few days as they have now shriveled to the "crunchy on the outside" stage. A few dry heaves later and I've got the pudding out and down the garbage disposal. Unfortunately, the dishwasher is full of clean dishes, so there's one more thing I have to do, before I can put the pudding stained cups in for a cleansing. While I'm here, I clean the four pots and pans left in the sink and give the countertop a once over just for the hell of it.

Now, where's that vacuum? I haven't vacuumed the house in...well, I can't ever remember, but I know I had a vacuum that my older brother gave to me. After searching around, I locate it and start to vacuum up the catnip. Unfortunately, the vacuum isn't sucking and after a quick inspection I realize that the filter is clogged and needs to be cleaned. Luckily, I clean dirty filters for a living (hello, the name of the blog), so this challenge does not throw me off.

I pull out the cartridge and assume hosing it down like I do with pool filters would probably not be a good idea (and that's where the good ideas ended). I notice a bunch of dust and crap embedded in the fins and I begin tapping it in the basement bathroom waste basket. Whoa! Bad idea. Now, I have to quickly vacate the bathroom and the smoke screen I have created before I have myself sneezing until Thanksgiving (and here I figured it would be diarhea). I learned from my first attempt, so I take the cartridge up to the larger trash can in the kitchen to finish the job. Maybe, I should have taken it outside...but, at least I was making strides in the right direction. Now to finally start that vacuuming.

Once I turn the vacuum cleaner on, the dog and cat are going ape shit running all over the place like it was fucking Godzilla. By the way, the previews for the new King Kong look pretty sick. The running around is amusing to me, so I chase them both for a little bit before I complete the cleaning of the whole basement and living room carpet upstairs.

I change over the loads of laundry, fix myself a quesadilla, and it's on to the computer desk. Lucky for me I decided to do this, because as I'm organizing the papers, I find the Comcast bill, which is due today. Soon, I've made a bunch of piles and thrown away all the useless papers. I haven't kept my Quicken records up to date in three months, so I grab the credit card bills and bank statements and start entering the info. as my desk is becoming more and more visible.

An hour and a half later, everything is entered and my desk is functional once again. I'm sitting at my desk, so why not see how the internet porn has changed since this morning? Hell, I've earned it. Now, that's a productive Saturday.