Saturday, March 17, 2012

Springtime, green slime

You wake up on a lazy Saturday to find the weather warm, sunny, and springlike, and while a nagging voice in the back of the mind whines, "Don't enjoy it! You can't have weather this nice so early in the year without paying for it down the road!", your pale, pasty, northern winter skin begs to be taken outside into the sunshine.

So you head for the deck to sit with your feet up and read your newspaper to the sound of birds in the trees heralding spring, except all the deck furniture looks as if it's been living in the bottom of an aquarium that hasn't been cleaned in a decade. What is that green slime? Algae? It coats the table and chairs, discolors the shady parts of the deck and even the siding. Who wants to sit on green slime?

So you fetch a bucket and a pile of rags and some Pine-Sol and you start scrubbing, shoving furniture around and turning it over to get to the really yucky spots, and before you know it sweat pours down your face and neck and back and combines with Pine-Sol to produce a vile odor that sticks with you, repelling all living beings that come close enough to sniff it, but the hard work pays off and in less time than it takes to wallpaper the Parthenon the deck and its furniture are sparkling clean.

You have vanquished the green slime! You deserve a rousing round of applause, but what you really want is a chance to sit in the sun, put your feet up, and welcome spring.

As soon as everything dries off.

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