The Joy of Cleaning

YES, I said cleaning, shut up. I got tired of Katya nagging me, so I started straightening the office today. I got one corner done, and BOY did I find some good stuff!

Besides several partially used notebooks, with some writing I had forgotten about in them, I found, among other things:

Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use, by Bill Brohaugh. It “uncovers older meanings of words that are out of joint with almost everyone’s sense of propriety.” It tells me that “drat” is a contraction of “God rot you” and “muscles” comes from the Latin for “little mouse” because muscles rippling look like little mice crawling about under the skin. Ugh!

A set of PrintMaster CDs, which I used to use to make posters and greeting cards. I don’t know if it will run on Linux, but I plan to find out. I loved it, and I haven’t found anything for Linux that comes close.

The Winter 2007/8 issue of This England Quarterly. Heaven only knows where it came from, but it’s a delight, from “Garden Flowers of England” through “Let’s Preserve Our English Dialects” to “This England’s Country Calendar.”

I can’t wait to see what other treasures I’ll unearth!

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character cleans a mass of clutter and finds something unexpected.

MA

About

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but now live in the woods in southern Indiana. Though I only write fiction, I love to read non-fiction. The more I learn about this world, the more fantastic I see it is.

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One thought on “The Joy of Cleaning

  1. Jane

    August 28, 2013 at 9:47am

    Hi.
    Congrats on your finds.
    I, too, am mining my home, allegedly for the purpose of cleaning and finding the floor, but the real reason is so I can find stuff I forgot I ever had, as well as those pesky things I thought I’d never see again.
    Good luck!

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    • Author

      Marian Allen

      August 28, 2013 at 11:41am

      Thanks for the good wishes! See, the trick is to leave the mess for so long that clearing it out is exciting, right?

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  2. Terry Cramer

    August 29, 2013 at 11:36pm

    I love those silly definitions!

    I found boxes recently that I hadn’t unpacked. Now I have four colanders, two electric can openers, and four coffee makers. I already have plans for them.

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    • Author
    • Author

      Marian Allen

      September 3, 2013 at 8:17am

      Heh! My office is a SHAMEFUL mess, but it’s so much fun to find stuff! It’s like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre without the death.

      Permalink  ⋅ Reply
      • Jen Christopherson

        September 4, 2013 at 12:05pm

        My desk has become only the center of “the lost things”! It’s beginning to take over the room! Hee hee hee! I have to go through it soon. I, also, want to know where all the dishes came from, cause I don’t own THAT many!!! Oh, well, time to go wash..

        In a little while!

        Permalink  ⋅ Reply

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