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Coming along, coming along

First of all, it's August 1st.  AHHHG-ust 1st.  That's the way my aunt from Maine used to say it.  Really, AHHG-ust.   And it's true.  We all kind of go, AHHH!  because...(dont' say it! we ban the s-word in summer)  but really we shouldn't do that.  No.  There are exactly 4.5 weeks of SUMMER left and more... c'mon people... it's ok... take a deep breath.
A friend of mine used to say "Every day in June is like a Friday, every day in July is like Saturday, and every day in August is like a Sunday..."  Alas, it is true, but it's not September yet, so brace yourself for the last 4 Awesome weeks of August.  Pretend someone just walked in your office and said "I'm granting you four weeks of vacation!"  What would you do?  Well, for one thing you can get started on that Summer Bucket List.  Really, let's go people... time's a wasting...

The one thing I absolutely Have to do before this week ends is get my Tub Clean. It's not a Bucket List, it's a TUB List.  It's been a Process.  I looked up what to do to get those old rubbery adhesive decals out and found "Goof Off."  Now the name sounds innocuous, so I asked my husband to pick some up at the hardware store, but it is not Innocuous.  It's actually pretty bad stuff.  So I became determined not to use it, even though I didn't take it back to the hardware store yet.
First I realized it had Acetone in it, which is also in nail polish remover, so I grabbed the acetone-free kind and got to work.

Then, as I was rubbing away with the rubber gloves that my ever-so-thoughtful-husband got me even though I didn't ask him, the rubber latex whatever worked like an eraser to take off the adhesive once the acetone had gotten into it.  Then I had the ingenious idea to use an actual eraser to scrub it off.




That worked too.  However, the next day I started to clean all the gobbledy-goock out and the hot, boiling water I used did make the adhesive less sticky.  So I started scraping with an ever-green wooden popsicle stick from my kids art supplies! Yes, chemicals be damned!  This actually worked the best and brought the most self-satisfied grin across my face as my elbow grease and determination got all that yucky goo off there!  It took a lot of work.  So we have about 9 decals off and 5 to go.

 It's coming along, coming along...


And maybe, just maybe someday I'll have this! (I think maybe I need to tack this over the tub as I work.)
Just like Summer...it's just coming along - not over yet! and we'll keep working at it till we have that perfect summer day when we get to do everything we want... sleep late, drink coffee outside with a blue sky all around, lounge on a beach chair or deck chair or chaise lounger with our feet up and a book too, wear our bathing suit til it hurts, get a hot tan without trying, (you know that not-so-good tan that feels so good when you get between the crisp white sheets of your bed that lets you know you had a little too much sun today...) eat something fresh from a garden, water ourselves or our children or our plants, eat a perfect salad for lunch, drink a really refreshing ice water that hits the spot like only it can in summer, drink some wine before dinner, and have fish tacos for supper...walk around the block and check out everyone else's gardens, weedy as they may be, because it's summer:  lazy, hazy days of summer!  Even if you didn't get to yet, you have plenty of time...  34 days to go by my count.

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