2023 Life Logs, Day 135: The Problem is Time … Not Enough
Date: Monday, May 15, 2023
Weather: Sunny; High 64 Low 54 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Time, time, time. In my life, it seems like there is never enough of it! We are down to the line with boat work as the boat goes in the water on Tuesday, May 30th. Or maybe the 31st. Whichever, it is coming soon and Heather leaves town next week and doesn’t return until the night before the boat goes in. So, all of the cleaning and painting has to be done before she leaves town. I was in meetings all day today with just a break for lunch, so there was not enough time to drive to the boat to check to see how the teak looked after yesterday’s cleaning.
At 5:30 pm, I drove straight from my last meeting to pick up Jonah and Sam to take them to Harwich for soccer practice. Heather and Jed were headed to the boat when I arrived. So, when I returned with the boys at 9 pm, I got the full report from Heather. The teak results were mixed. It was obvious that where we were able to really scrub with the brushes we had, it looks good. But in the corners and other hard to reach areas, it needs a little touch up. I wish there was time to do another full cleaning, but there just isn’t. I will see what I can do to spot clean and hope that does the trick. We used Oxy Clean dissolved in warm water as our cleaning solution rather than harsher chemicals due to Jed’s allergies. You just put a cup of Oxy in a gallon of warm water in a garden sprayer and spray away. Then scrub. Spray some more and rinse, rinse, rinse. The Oxy seemed to work great, at least where we agitated the surface adequately. In my research, I read that oxygenated bleach is a good teak cleaner. When I asked Heather if she knew what oxygenated bleach was, she immediately replied, “Oxy Clean.” Who knew? Certainly not me. Technically it is a natural plant derivative product called sodium percarbonate.
Tomorrow and Wednesday are days as busy as today, and Thursday is only a little better. I think I might have time to breathe on Friday. In the meanwhile, can someone lend me some time?
