Comes Around

I needed a gallon of cleaning concentrate, Damp Mop. I use two gallons a year and was out, sandwiched in a run to the cleaning supply store which is, in absolute clarity, called Cleaning Supplies Inc., instead of something clever like The Janitor's Closet. Becky runs the place, a tidy operation, everything a janitor could ever need; rents scrubbers and polishers, carries replacement pads, the best mop heads, solvents the general public wouldn't know how to handle. A chemist I consult when I can't figure out what something is or does, says that we could make a whole generation of clean bombs. Cleveland, in the spring, could use a couple of these, something that would wash away the grime of sooty snow and salt. I say the trip, for cleaner, was sandwiched in, we were full-tilt boogie all day. If I hadn't hung the show solo yesterday we wouldn't have made the deadline. But I knew that when I pushed hard yesterday, the internal clock that clicks off the hours until opening, a theater trick. You make a list of priorities, some things get glossed over. We actually have an hour on Tuesday, before we open; I have some touch up painting to finish, the pedestal tops, a few dozen places on the various walls; three different colors, so many washings of the brush. D and I were the perfect crew today, clicking on all cylinders, handing each other things that were needed before we could ask. OSHA doesn't like, but all tradesmen toss tools and save steps or trips up and down the ladder. Human nature. A toss many of us have perfected, causing no small amount of damage along the way, is an underhand cast that hangs a wrench or a closed utility knife just above the out-stretched hand of someone on a ladder. That was a fun sentence, a lot of memories, the things I've thrown to people on ladders, seriously, you wouldn't believe. I've been blessed to need to learn to do so many different things. If I'd ever had any money, I would have hired someone who already knew how to do whatever it was that I had to learn to do because I needed something and couldn't afford to buy it. Beautiful day, 70, down to 40 tonight, morel weather. Collect them in a mesh sack, they need air or develop a slime. I like them dry so I can brush them and not rinse them, their flavor is too delicate to wash away. And as my Mom always said -a little dirt ain't going to hurt you-. At the cleaning supply place, there was a guy ahead of me, buying a new mop bucket and wringer, heavy duty Rubbermaid (I like the image) and I was looking at it while the new girl was looking up the price. The wringer was all hard plastic, a couple of metal pins as pivot for the plastic hinge, Becky was on the phone, the guy asked me what I thought. By this time I was down on my knees inspecting the hinge, the forensic janitor, doing a Stress Failure Analysis. The new girl is looking over the counter and Becky is off the phone. I'm aware of none of this because I'm wearing my sword-fishing hat with the long brim (it acts as blinders for me, when we're in the middle of a push) and I'm looking at a piece of work that's going to fail. I use a generic pyrithione-zinc dandruff shampoo, to keep the dander down, but my hackles stood up, and when he asked I told him it was a piece of shit. The room was very quiet. But I know mops, and wringing. I'm a professional. I'm restoring a Donaldson right now, the jaws and hinge are works of art. When I'm wringing a mop, in the heat of the moment, I use my back, and my knee on the bucket, tend to exert a fair amount of pressure, so the replacement handle requires consideration, I know my mop-buckets too (in order categorical ) and I admonish him not to buy it, go to an auction, pick up something for nothing. Becky agrees. The plastic fails. Foot ergs or knee ergs or inner thigh ergs, very funny moment with that damned Brit on the back porch today; I cut him no slack, we understand each other, more or less. We act as if we understood what we thought that other person was saying. At his age, he said, a perfect ass was purely a visible thing, something you watched. No one could live with me, I'm impossible. I still think about giving classes. Maybe that's the product of going through the grind, you see something, want to pass it along. Hey, did you see that?