HOW TO TURN WASHING THE WINDOWS INTO A MONTH-LONG PROJECT:

1.  Wake up, and check your To Do list. Decide to wash all the windows in the house, with Windex, because you were born with a genetic pre-disposition to Windex based on the habits of your mother and her mother before her. Nothing else will do but Windex and paper towels. Anyone who thinks vinegar and newspaper actually clean windows has not followed such a vinegar-newspaper cleaning with Windex and discovered black ink all over their paper towels (not to mention the black smudges on your white window frames). Meditate on the superiority of your wise choices.

2.  Clean two windows. Notice the eggshell-hued Roman blinds are stained with cat spit and fly juice.

3.  Take down the Roman blinds. Attempt to dismantle them so you can put them in the washing machine, get tangled up, and accidentally rip them.

4.  Decide that the stains wouldn’t have come out in the wash anyway. Reuse the Roman blinds by throwing them on top of the invasive lemon balm that has taken over your garden like an army of shiny green leaves, and vow to suffocate its hidden tentacles of evil.

5.  Notice the other weeds in the garden. Yank a few of them out of the ground. Give up. They’re just going to grow back anyway.

6.  Return to your Windex and the windows, and as you kneel on the couch to reach the top of the third window, realize the taupe couch cover is disgusting, having been half-shredded and drooled on by the nineteen-year-old cat who died last year. Choose to change the couch cover since you smartly purchased a spare at IKEA a decade ago in hopeful anticipation of the cat’s death.

7. Hunt for an hour for the strange tool that fits into the bolts on the bottom of your IKEA couch. Finally find the tool taped to the bottom of the couch.( You think you’re so smart, don’t you?)

8.  Spend an hour and a half on your back on the floor dismantling the IKEA couch since the only way to change the cover is to break down the couch into eighteen pieces. Put the new cover on. Spend another hour and a half hour on your back on the floor putting the couch back together again.

9.  Pull a muscle in your shoulder as you get up off the floor. Take three Advil. Conclude that you ought to wash them down with wine to facilitate the relaxation of your injured muscle.

10.  Open a bottle of wine with your girlfriend and plop yourselves down on your brand-spanking-new-looking couch.

11.  Sip wine, and take note that you have no curtains in the living room anymore since you ripped down the Roman blinds and threw them in your garden. Engage in a philosophical discussion regarding the potential shades and textures of new curtains.

12. Observe the exposed, chipped window trim.

13. Conclude you need to paint the trim before you hang new curtains. Recognize if you paint the trim, you really should patch and paint the abused walls, too, which have been defiled with one too many waffling nails. Engage in a philosophical discussion with regarding the potential shades of paint for the walls.

14.  Point out all the wall repairs that your girlfriend needs to do before you paint.

15.  Ponder that you might splash on the new couch cover while you paint. Consider moving furniture out of the room before painting. Declare you should wax and polish the floor if you’ve gone to the trouble to remove all the furniture.

16.  Open a second bottle of wine.

17.  Make a list of everything you must buy from Target and Home Depot.

18.  If you’re going to have to leave the house, think about what else you need while you’re out. Make a list of all the other house-related projects that need to be completed, including refinishing the old kitchen cabinets and replacing the bathroom shower curtain.

19.  Remember that washing the windows was already on your To Do list, and that you need more Windex.

20.  Proclaim you will finish washing the windows first thing tomorrow morning.

21.  Finish your wine, and settle in for a nap on the couch. It’s been a long day, and you need to rest up for all of your projects in the coming month.