Whooo hee! the fire place is clean! and I don't just mean that we've picked up, vacuumed and dusted, although we have done that as well. I've even cleaned off the mantle and polished the wood.

*AS* we were doing the vacuuming, (and I seriously mean *AS*; D was running the machine and I was answering the phone) the phone rang with an offer of $20 off a fire place sweep and inspection. This has been on my To Do list for about the last seven years, and we jumped on it. How often do the stars line up like this?

So, within a couple of hours, the sweeps were at our door. Yes, they really do use the same style brooms as Dick Van Dyke hoisted around in Mary Poppins, but they 'vacuum' as much as they sweep these days. No, they didn't have any undersized boy that they shoved up the flue either. I checked.

We filled their ash can (which is where the vacuum mechanism deposits what ever it sweeps up). We clogged their hose several times. I did mention that I didn't know when it had been cleaned last, but the fellow assured me that since 1978, in order to sell a house, the fireplace has to be cleaned and inspected. So it's probably only been the twenty years that we've been here that it hasn't been cleaned, and not the the 50-plus (or 70-plus!) years that I was afraid of. Whew.

Huzzah! and it's a nice rainy night, just right for a fire. But I'll probably wait. There's still the upstairs bedroom to tackle, and that needs done by Sunday morning.