Friday, April 07, 2006

Who cares about my weather?

Nobody. I know that.

“Everybody talks about the weather, but” (and yeah, I know, you’ve heard this...So has everybody else) “nobody does anything about it.”

(Education time: That quote is attributed to Mark Twain, although it doesn’t appear in any of his books.) (That was free.)

That said, it’s supposed to be 90 here today (a record for this date) with partly cloudy skies. And tomorrow, after a weak cool front blows through, it’s supposed to be 82 with bright sunshine.

Hint: You’ll probably find Carol and yours truly out on the golf course in the early to mid afternoon. These days in the 80s with some breeze blowing are great for golf.

But first there’ll be some projects to work on for the rest of the day. We live in a mild, humid climate that’s perfect for the growth of mildew on many outside surfaces around the house. Examples include the bricks (ours are white, and the mildew gives them a sickly green tinge), the fascia boards around the edge of the roof, the white-painted soffit boards under the roof overhang, and the underside of our back patio cover.

At least once a year Carol decides that the mildew is winning and it’s time for us to fight back. So we break out the Clorox and detergent, spray the offending off-colored surfaces, scrub them with some kind of brush, and rinse off the residue. It’s not unlike washing the car, except the house is MUCH bigger than the car and takes a LOT longer to get clean.

In Carol’s defense, I WILL say that the house looks much better when the white surfaces are white than it does when they are green or black. And mildew never produces a solid covering of one color. If it did we could always pretend that we intended the fascia boards to be dark grey in some areas. But no, mildew has to create streaks and splotches that vary in size, shape and hue so much that nobody thinks them to be anything other than what they are: the result of a lazy homeowner.

Even though Forest Gump said, “Lazy is as lazy does,” (...or was that “stupid?” Ah, same difference) nobody wants their neighbors to cluck their tongues as they pass, point at the offending house, and say (or think), “What lazy people must live there.”

So, although we won’t get even close to the entire exterior of the house clean tomorrow, at least we’ll make a start at it. And then we’ll play golf.

Weather permitting.

But you don’t care about our weather. So forget I mentioned it.

6 comments:

Hale McKay said...

You assume we want to know about your mildew!
...LOL joking, John, but the opening was there.

kenju said...

I know all about mildew, and now we are fighting it in our air vents. ICK!

Miss Cellania said...

Nobody wants to hear about great weather, when the weather HERE sucks. My house also has mildew, but it ain't gonna get washed.

Candace said...

Re: my alleged move to North Carolina - I hear they have four seasons there. I won't know how to act. Oh wait. Yes I do. I'll just tell Tomcat that obvy I'll need a new wardrobe!

Anonymous said...

Duke, this maybe a stupid idea but why don't you just paint your house green.

That's what I'd do and then stand back and say "come on the mr mildew, see what you can do to that".

I'd then sit on my porch with a pint of mild.

Shooter said...

Gotta love TX. In all honesty, the inside of my house is clean, but I'm not quite ready to tackle the outside. Although in my defense, I did get out and de-weed the front walkway. Now I can say I've done that twice in the 2 years we have lived here... Hope you had a great golf game. Enjoy the fleeting spring we get.