Today, I finally broke out the bucket and scrubber to deal with the tiled floor in the kitchen, ground floor loo and entry area. While I was at it, I hauled the vacuum cleaner downstairs and tackled the sitting room. As usual, the quantity of loose cat hair had to be seen to be believed — and it gets everywhere.

The plastic upholstery on my office chair is perished after some thirty years of use, and it lately began shedding nasty black shreds all over the study floor. So today I hauled it downstairs (backwards so as to avoid risking my neck) and into the garage to await the next heavy-goods trash day. I don’t want to replace it until after the move, so I’ll make do with Edmund’s old bentwood straight chair for the next few months. I’d like to replace it with an old-fashioned oak swivel chair, the kind with a carved seat and no upholstery, but I’ll be lucky to find one of those in decent shape. Every furniture maker in Ontario (and there used to be dozens) churned them out for decades, but they were heavily used and are now very démodé.

So far, I have left the lawn alone, hoping to give the bugs and butterflies a fighting chance, but it’s getting noticeably shaggy — time to whip up the neighbour kid to start mowing.

I had hoped to have the house listed if not sold by now, but I’m still waiting on Lucas the foundation guy, who says he might be able to give me a start date next week. Note that he won’t be ready to start; just ready to give me a date. That means I’ll be in Stratford for a while yet, so I might as well buy myself some theatre tickets and look forward to summer evenings on the porch watching the fireflies.