Progress toward "impeccablization"

Yesterday I managed to get a lot done: I figured out how to post to Craig's list and supplied some pictures to it of furniture I have to clear out in order to attractively "stage" my "home" for a quick and favourable sale. I started cleaning off a large mirrored door I once painted to match the wall, in order to make the hallway not look like such a long tunnel. I still like the shortened look more, but realize the home buyer might not enjoy the prospect of de-painting the mirror some day. Anything to leave no trace of me behind...

I "swabbed the deck" - meaning, I physically hauled several large flower and plant pots and balcony furniture down to the dumpster (from where people eventually made them their own), and washed the railing and floor. It's an extensive balcony, wrapping all the way around a corner.

I think it's been at least 6 years since I've touched that balcony. I used to like to keep a garden on it, sit out amidst the flowers on a plastic chair beside a plastic table, sipping a coffee in the morning and watching bees do their thing, carve out and maintain a peaceful urban oasis. One day I found a package of cigarettes out there. It appeared that someone who had no business on my balcony had climbed up to hang out, enjoy my second-floor garden, or maybe try to break in, had become interrupted, and left abruptly without actually smoking. The cigarettes were a mystery, in that neither I nor the roommate I had at the time smoked. Whoever it was (and it could not have been anyone who belonged on my balcony, in my urban oasis), the experience managed to put me off gardening entirely. From that point on the garden was never restored. I never enjoyed hanging out on the balcony anymore, knowing that it was too exposed, too vulnerable to feel like my private refuge.

Mold grows amazingly well in this climate, and there was no shortage of it, clinging impossibly to even shiny painted surfaces. It was a bit of a dirty mess, but nothing that several pails of warm water with bleach, a scrub brush, and some springtime energy couldn't handle. Now it's spotless and I feel victorious over that part of my tiny world.

Being very active all day like this is certainly easier than it would have been a year ago, when I weighed 25 pounds more.