So
I cleaned last night. How exciting. I cleaned out my junk/project room and ended up with an entire contractor bag full of junk to go to the curb. Where does it all come from? The very back room has a little cat door on it
and the floor gets dirty because of the dead leaves that get blown in and tracked in by humans and critters. So I had to sweep all that out. Then to my vast annoyance I realized the mop I had bought at Big Lots never seems to have made it home with me. As I recall the mop did not have a price tag
so they grabbed another mop
rang it up
and left my mop sitting in the corner. At that time I was so anxious to just get the hell out of big lots
I must have left my mop behind. My Mooooop!
So
all I had was my little swifter mop. That swifter juice is some sort of magic juice. Not only is it the best-smelling harsh chemical I have ever come across
it evaporates in seconds. However
the swifter is meant for little dainty touchups. If a toilet over flows or someone pukes in your house
that wonder-mop suddenly becomes as useless as a Twinkie on a stick. But the swifter is what I had. I went over the back floor several times and went through several swifter stick-on rag things. The air filled with the sweet scent of swifter. I bet in a few years some kids are going to figure out how to get high off of swifter and they are going to ban it.
Anyhow
this is perhaps the most mundane post I ever made.
I went for a bike-ride last night
and I rode up to where they are refurbishing the pier. It used to be some grassy knoll
but the sign on the construction site told me that the sitting of Sanford had gotten a half a million-dollar grant to landscape it. I peered at the little artist conception. Apparently all they are going to do is plant some palm trees on it
perhaps add a bench or two
and in the center they are sticking… something. I could not tell what it was. The artist conception was drawn looking from the top down
and it's really not that good. I cannot figure out what it is. It would be neat if they stuck a stature in there. There are not enough statues in Florida. I think they are neat.
When I was a kid in Tennessee there was a stature outside of the building where they took us to go swimming at the daycare I was in. It was a stature of some renewed local historical figure holding out his palm in goodwill. Once someone had put a bunch of eggs in his palm. The kid in the bus seat behind me had screeched out 'He's holding EGSS!'.
So far I am enjoying the extra daylight. When it gets dark in Sanford
it gets really dark. Do not ask me why. I think it is the lack of ambient lighting because of the lake is so nearby. My house gets dark as well. When I can't see
I don't feel like doing anything. I'm solar-powered. With the extra daylight I feel like I have to putter around some more.
I went for a soak in my Hot tub before I went to bed. It was very quiet out and a swift breeze came out of nowhere and blew through the trees. I like to sit right in the middle of the tub indian style with just my head poking out of the water and the steam swirling around me. Last night the lazy wind that blew through made the steam swirl into little eddies and vortexes around my head. It was very serene.
Here's a chik holding some eggs.
2026 Update
Dialing the machine back to April 2006, when Ed waged war on leaves with a phantom mop and magical Swiffer juice.
First, the mop that never made it home from Big Lots is a perfect 2006 parable: we used to abandon actual objects in actual stores out of pure errand exhaustion. Now I can't buy a cleaning product without it arriving in a subscription box tied to an app that nags me. Second, your Swiffer juice prediction aged exactly backwards — the stuff wasn't banned; it just spawned a thousand competing chemical 'fresh scents,' while the kids found plenty of other ways to fog their heads, mostly involving small screens. Third, a half-million-dollar grant for palm trees and a possible statue sounds quaint; today that money buys a designer park bench with a QR code asking for donations. And being 'solar-powered' has a different ring now — people still claim it, but they mean their phone needs charging before they can feel human. The hot tub steam eddies remain timeless. You floated like a smug frog in the dark while the world got brighter, then dimmer, then brighter again.
“2006 Ed, did you ever march back to Big Lots to rescue your Mooooop, or did you spend the next twenty years pretending a Swiffer could handle a toilet overflow?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, I never did march back to Big Lots. I thought about it, sure, but by the time I got home and realized my Mooooop was sitting in that corner, I was too damn tired and too cheap to burn the gas. I figured the mop had found a better life, probably in some janitor's closet, living the dream. So I've been limping along with the Swiffer ever since. It's fine for dust and cat hair and the occasional dead leaf, but if a toilet overflowed? Lord, I'd probably just stand there with my Twinkie-on-a-stick and cry. I keep telling myself I'll buy a real mop at Wal-Mart, but then I get distracted by something shiny or cheap, and next thing I know I'm home with a bag of pretzels and no mop again. That Swiffer juice does smell mighty fine, though. Take that, grime.
