Dirty Work

Today’s lake-girl mission: clean and winter-wrap the pontoon boat. Alllll…hands…on…deck…!

Alas.  The crew. Clearly…absent. 

All those torpedo-ing swimmers and manly-pancake-grilling midnight card players (who kicked over a waxy citronella candle and left a grease ring and pancake batter) and little-kid-cracker-eaters and hairy dogs (well, just one dog) and fishermen who slimed black-black worm dirt everywhere - those crew who had a part in its current state - were obviously Somewhere Else.

No surprise.  I usually do the Cinderella work around here.  Aye, aye, some of us play and some of us scrub the deck.

With no responders in sight, I grabbed a big tub of hot water, three scrub brushes of different sizes, a handful of old rags, bottles of Tilex and Murphy soap and carpet cleaner, and went to work until my back and neck and shoulders screamed for mercy: “MUUUUTINY!”  But I cracked the whip and they kept working anyway, for a long time actually. A stern (tyrannical?) taskmaster, I am. 

Five hours later, I slithered down the one-foot-wide steps on the boat trailer like one of those cartoon characters gone flat and worm-like. At the bottom, suddenly aware of my limp body, I wondered about the alternative “better way” currently on the table. Very simple: don’t do it.  Let the pontoon boat get trashed.  Isn’t that why we bought an older, used boat in the first place? (This counsel straight from The Admiral.)

Personally, I’m FINE with old stuff, but not so fine with junky, neglected old stuff in the sense of invading green moss and black mold and obvious dirt (like black worm dirt in the cracks of the seats) that advertise compounding sloth and demean the boating experience. Those should not be allowed. 

REVEILLE is sounding.  Wake-up! If indeed I’m the only one who cares, I will continue to be the one-woman cleaning crew for this newest Mulie vessel.  But then Dirty Work has always been my middle name.