High Tide Episodes 29: A Little Flirting, 30: Leave It to Bever, and 31: I’ll Keep You My Dirty Little Secret are live on Kindle Vella. Go forth, read, enjoy.

Oh. My. God.

After a month of intensive work all of the public rooms are guest-quality clean (well, except where Jessie peed outside a litter box this morning, but that area is drying in preparation for sweeping and disinfecting). What’s guest-quality clean, you ask?

• All extraneous stuff is put away (frankly, this probably took the longest—Ramón and I have a bad habit of depositing stuff everywhere)
• All surfaces are dusted (including corners of walls and ceilings, undersides of counters, and window frames)
• All carpets are vacuumed/cleaned
• All hard surface floors are steam mopped/washed
• All curtains are washed
• All windows are washed
• All kitchen appliances are cleaned
• All furniture is dusted/cleaned/polished

And yes, this took a month to do because I’m 1) old and fat, 2) recovering from surgery, 3) trying to finish a book, 4) running a small business, and 5) cleaning up after an absent-minded engineer and four cats.

Mind you, I still have to fix the downstairs toilet’s intake valve, get the fridge water filter installed (considering that the last time I did this the intake didn’t shut off and flooded the kitchen floor so this will require Extra Steps), see if I can fix the springs in the living room chair so that humans can sit in it without losing circulation in their lower legs, clean my office, our bedroom and bathroom, then prep the guest room for Friday (aka kick out the cats, vacuum and dust, then make up the bed).

But the back of the really intensive cleaning has been broken. I may actually write today, then have a lovely dinner with my aunt and uncle who are unexpectedly in town. Whee!