Clean Windows and a View of my Part of the World

I was born by Caesarean section, but you can’t really tell… except that when I leave my house, I always go out the window.
– Stephen Wright –

I don’t mind cleaning the windows. It’s a big job – the Red House has lots of them. But it is one of those jobs that, when done infrequently, is so satisfying because it is such a radical change.

Washing windows isn’t a high tech job at my house. All it takes is a bottle of window cleaner, a wash rag, a dry rag, a step stool, and a very long ladder. I start in the morning and sporadically during the day I clean whichever windows are in the shade.

I do the outsides of the windows first. They won’t be perfectly clean, because there will be marks on the insides too. Another day I will do the insides of the windows. They still won’t be perfectly clean then either, because there will now be marks on the outsides. But that’s okay. My goal for windows isn’t perfectly clean, just cleaner than they were before.

Perfectly clean windows inside AND out might be attainable in other parts of the world, but here, where the prairies and foothills and mountains meet in a turbulent world of wind and thunder storms, the pursuit of perfectly clean windows would be foolish.

I picked this week to wash windows, because in the morning there were clear blue skies – not a cloud in sight. It stayed that way for the two days I spent washing windows, brushing cobwebs off the exterior walls, hosing down the deck and lawn chairs, and watering the parched flower pots. Within minutes of finishing these jobs, a bank of black clouds moved in, blotting out much of the blue sky. The wind picked up, dust started to swirl, but the rain held off.

The next morning the clouds had intensified, and a light drizzle refreshed the sunrise. The weather forecast was cloudy with showers for the next few days. Washing windows – my way of doing a Rain Dance!

There will be a rain dance Friday night, weather permitting.
– George Carlin –

Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
– Cowboy Proverb –