In which the author is unrepentantly naughty.

I made dinner tonight.  Don’t be shocked, but all the ingredients were fresh, prepared and cooked by yours truly.  Shut up, I totally did do it!  And then I ate it.  all.  Ooops.  I meant to save some for leftover lunch tomorrow, and I ate up every bit of it.  It’s not like it was a TREMENDOUS amount of food – I had those frozen boneless skinless thighs, right?  So I thawed out three of them ( I know, I know! but it gets yet worse!), thinking that I’ll cook some for dinner and have some for lunch the next day (Friday) – no problemo! Only problem, when I got home tonight, they had thawed all their nasty meatjuice all over the bottom of my refrigerator – say it with me:  ew ewewewewewewewwww!!!!

So I cleaned it up, and opted to cook the chicken post haste, after I cleaned the oven (ding! to-do task finished!) and put some towels in the washer (ding ding! to-do list the second!), so I did.  I got down on the floor, and scrubbed the everlovin’… you know what… out of the bottom of the oven and the racks, and that oven is so clean now, you could eat off it.  Please don’t, though.   Then I cored out a green bell pepper, gave it a good smack to get all the seeds out, and sliced it up.  I sauteed it in some oil on the stove, with some garlic, salt & pepper, a little onion, and some Italian Mrs. Dash (Is that like ‘Senora Dash-a’?).  – Tasty!  then I dipped each thigh in a milk bath, coated it in flour with some Italian Senora Dash-a, garlic, and salt & pepper and tossed that in the hot oil and let it sautee up.  I know, completely tasty!  The drawback:  Dirty dishes.  Lots of them.  blah.  Oh well, at least the dishwasher is empty, so I can put it all right in and get to gettin’, as Miss Neicy says.  Yeah, I’m a Clean House Fan (Completely check this show out – it’s HILARIOUS!! And I’ve never felt better about my housekeeping skills (some of the people on that show have PROBLEMS). I can actually feel my mom balk at that statement, and she doesn’t even read my blog.  Hee.  But, in my defense, I’ve quite improved at cleaning house now, with the power of The Book of Clean on my side, so my house really is nice and clean, and I’m not embarrassed to have company over anymore, which is kinda great!!! It does have a couple of cluttered spaces – my dining room table needs some attention and my little bar, but at least it’s not ALL OVER the place like it used to be, and those spaces are easily cleaned up too.   But I digress.  When the chicken was just almost done cooking, I tossed in some fresh basil to flavor the oil and chicken a little bit, just to see if it would work.  For the record?  It didn’t.  But it wasn’t a bad idea, right? right?  So anyway, there it sat, all delicious-looking, and I readily admit to having started eating the green peppers off the plate while the chicken was finishing, so of course I tasted the first piece of chicken to finish, to make sure my handiwork was not all for naught, and it was delicious, and wouldn’t you know it, I finished the whole thing while I was standing there waiting on the other pieces?!  I didn’t even realize it until it was all gone (sad face).   The other chicken finished up and I got it out and took my plate to sit and eat, and I started eating and just decimated the whole plate!  Cleaned it all!!!  I’m going to attribute my recent hunger to the fact that I got home and cleaned the oven (and that nasty space under the oven, under the storage under the oven (I pulled the drawer completely out and swept it all out – ew!! The people who cleaned this apartment before I moved in didn’t do a very thorough job, which is a bummer, but oh well.  At least the whole house wasn’t filthy and disgusting. :)

So anyway, here I am typing away when I still have stuff on my to-do list to do.   Off I go!!  Thighs cook down and get smaller when they cook, so I wasn’t entirely naughty, right?   And it’s not like I eat 3 chicken thighs every night.  … right? Right?!

Pictures will come forth soon, when I take them.  Problem is that I’ve just not been a good picture-taker of late and I’m not really one of those people who’ll take a picture of just anything.  You know?  Oh well, off I go.

Domestic Goddess, I ain’t: Wherein the author learns an important lesson about regular cleaning and repents her slovenly ways.

Wherein the author learns an important lesson about regular cleaning and repents her slovenly ways, but not in that order.

Yes, you read it right, folks. I cleaned. and cleaned. and cleaned. The outcome? A clean bathtub, commode, bathroom sink, spot treated bedroom carpet, and vacuumed mattress. I have pictures, but I didn’t dry out my bathtub after rinsing it the last time, and it looks like I’ve just taken a picture of a bathtub after a bath, which is weird. So I’m going to skip that one. I also (finally) cleaned up all the paint spatters from when the painters came and painted the bathroom ceiling (in a different color from the walls), after the Great Bathroom Flood of ‘08 (wherein the upstairs neighbor’s toilet raneth over and down through the floor (and a/c vent, yummy) and into my bathroom, in great streams of (fortunately clean) toilet water. The scoury side of a Scotch Brite sponge will take paint spatters off of the side of a fiberglass bathtub, did you know that? Painters: May I suggest a drop cloth? Seriously?)

‘But Miss Knotty!’ I hear you cry. ‘You’re a slooooobbb.’

Correction. I was a slob. I’ve turned over a new leaf. Fortunately for my apartment (and my meticulous roommate), it was the leaf of this book, highly recommended by my friend and sister Rockstar, Jennifer B. over at YaRN KNiTa.

She bought the book and talked about cleaning her place, and really sang the book to the heavens, so I got inspired, got the book, and followed suit. Yes, I’m a follower sometimes, but in this case, it is, as the very imitable (and mockable; Exhibit 1: SNL, Exhibit 2: Mad TV) Ms. Stewart says, ‘a good thing.’

I’m going to spare you the ‘before’ pictures. Because I forgot to take any. I did take a couple of ‘before’ pictures, though, for your reference, and to give testimony of my conversion to the [Target generic version of the] Magic Eraser Sponge. Oh. My. Clean. People. I had some bad scuff marks on the wall from where my black floor lamp had a run-in and scraping experience along the wall and I took the Eraser to it.

Exhibit the First:

The offending mark(s):

Eraser magic (damp)

With lamp back in place:

Exhibit the second:

A scuff where my (purple) CPU hit the wall. Sorry for the poor quality here – my cam is very arbitrary about flash usage and I was zoomed, so it’s not a good pic, but you can see the dark scuff spots.

Post erasing:

Dry, and the scuff is GONE!.

How much do I love this sponge? It has saved my deposit. You can imagine the Eraser love I’m feeling right now.

In other news: has anyone ever vacuumed their mattress? I did. I took out the brushy-upholstery brush thingy and vacuumed where the mattress stitching was (not that kind of mattress stitching) and cleaned out the lint and dust (I know, EW. Lint and dust in my BED). But, according to The Book of Clean, as I’ve come to call it, it gets in there, and it can play havoc with the ole sinuses. Well, that’s about the last thing I need when the trees are already blooming and giving me the stuffy-stuffy, so I took the mattress pad off and vacuumed the mattress. I’ll let you know if my allergies improve as a result of this action. I also spot-treated the cat’s ‘uh-oh’ spots on the carpet (mostly from her getting upset tummy or that time of the year (when they shed. Infer at will.)) and they’re drying now. I’ll vacuum over them when they fully dry.

My chief complaint at this moment is from my gloves – I think I’m going to have to go get a latex-free variety – my hands are feeling very dry and hurty from wearing them – yeah, it’s supposedly a ‘foam lined’ latex, but I’m still feeling my hands saying ‘oh no no no, Miss K, you don’t like the latex. Oh no you do not.’ Fortunately for me, they had latex-free sensitive skin gloves at the store, so back I will go (or maybe I’ll wait until I’m at the store and think of it, or make a list after the next time I clean (aka next week). Can I tell you how great the cleaning calendar is? Can I just sing its praises? I’m going to probably go make some copies and turn it into a little checklist or something so I can tick off the chores as they happen, and have a wonderfully clean home. So yeah, I’m feeling the cleaning love. I still have much packing to do. I got more boxes, woot, and so I’ll be packing away this evening. I still have a 5-box quota to meet tonight, so I’d better get to it!

Oh, by the by, the Important Lesson I learned about regular cleaning is that if you do all this cleaning on a regular basis, instead of once in a while in a giant fell swoop, the back, she does not hurt so much at the end. I’m going to take a Doan’s and watch a movie (after I pack 5 boxes. Seriously.)

Oh! One more thing:

I was gifted this lovely skein of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Merino (Colorway is Fall Foliage) by the lovely Blogless Libby, for watching her kitty babies over Easter – don’t you just LOVE those colors? I sure do! Thank you Libby! I see socks in my future!

Have a great Saturday night!