Rising from the dust

Apologies for the dramatic headline. This week has been somewhat crappy, and things didn't improve on Tuesday night when I arrived home to a dusty apartment. Now those who know me, know my housekeeping leaves a little to be desired, and there's always a fair bit of dust kicking around the old place. But Tuesday night was crazy, thick with dust. Like I opened the door and I could see a haze lingering in the air. When I wiped my hand over my bookshelves they were covered in a yellowy powder and I could literally see my footsteps on the floor when I walked.

When I went out to my balcony to investigate, it looked like it had suffered a freak August snowstorm. Everything, and I mean everything from the tiniest basil leaf to the cushions on my chairs, were covered in a thick, nasty layer of dust. Added to the mess were bits of concrete chunks, some peeling paint chips and a few cigarette butts for good measure.

Turns out, my building premises crew had decided to do a bit of brickwork repair right outside my unit -- removing a solid row of bricks about four inches from my bedroom window! Apparently the day had yielded a marathon of grinding, sawing and sanding, creating a desert full of dust that was looking for a location to land. And what better place than my home! 'Cause guess who went to work without closing her windows? This gal. Needless to say, several profanities and about four hours of cleaning, vacuuming, dusting, laundry and more swearing later, I sleepily crawled into bed dreaming of cutting down the scaffolding wires in the morning with a breadknife, sending those evil bricklayers to their crushing demise!!!

Not that I'm bitter. And I'm sure the building maitenance woman would agree with that sentiment, following a 9 a.m. phone call to the rental office where I tore a strip off of just about anyone within earshot of the telephone. They were, natrually, apologetic and explained that the building super had delivered notices to the apartments on either side of me, informing the tenants of the planned work, but neglected mine in the process. Lucky me! An offer of vaccuming was made, and an apology issued. I was too tired from my late-night cleaning binge to argue for much more, so I hung up the phone and hoped somehow my apartment wouldn't be quite a disaster zone when I returned home that night.

When I anxiously turned the key on Wednesday, I found that the building super (or secret cleaning gnomes) had in fact entered my apartment to re-vacuum my place, and they also cleaned my kitchen floor, why I'm not exactly sure, but I'm not complaining because it was due for a bit of a scrub. And while my balcony wasn't perfect, at least most of the dust was gone, and there was nary a cigarette butt in sight. My plants still look a bit worse for the wear, but given the weather so far this summer, I figure we're due for a massive rainstorm any second now that ought to clean them right off.

My inspection also happened to reveal a pretty new bloom peeking out of one of my geranium pots. For the longest time, I've been watching this stem grow, suspecting it was a weed, but also curious to see if it wasn't. Turns out it wasn't -- or at least it's the prettiest damn weed I've seen in a while. I snipped it off and brought it inside (giving it a quick bath to rid it of any traces of dust) and plunked it in a vase. It'll serve as a nice reminder that things always get better.