I Love Pressure Washing

I live alone now I have to either hire people to help me out, or if it is my kids who are helping me – I usually throw in a dinner to pay them back. Since this will be the first year that one of my kids do not live here or no one has moved back in, I am totally on my own.

My friends and family knows that I hate asking for help. Then I feel guilty about asking for help because my kids have their own lives, families, homes and responsibilities. I wish that my kids would just come over to help without being asked.


But this weekend things changed for me. The young man who does my lawn showed up to mow it, and he picked up the leaves around my house. The next day, my youngest daughter came over with her boyfriend and he brought along his pressure washer.

For four hours he cleaned the moss off of my house and then he worked on my cemented patio. I never even knew that one could clean off their patio. He worked hard and long and cleaned half of my patio. It was a contrast from black and white. Finally, I made him stop. Poor guy, he even missed the entire Steelers game to do all this work but I did scrounge up three beers and gave those to him. And of course I had a lot of snacks, dinner and apple pie to serve him and my daughter.

He left the machine and suggested he would come back next week to finish the job. I said that I would call one of my boys and let them finish it. Afterwards, I made two phone calls to two different sons; one I called and asked to clean out my gutters, which now seemed to be sprouting small trees in different places. The other call was to my youngest son, asking him to clean the rest of the patio and to do a few more chores around my house. Both said yes.

The next day – something very interesting happened. I looked at my book on Home Repairs with Rosie the Riveter on the cover, flexing her muscles, and I stared at her long and hard. With an unspoken message, I changed into my work clothes. I pulled in the grille and took down the hammock and put both into the garage. For my finale, I hooked up the pressure washer to the hose. For 1 -1/2 hours, I worked on the rest of the patio. The machine is light and not bulky, making my job pretty easy. Yet, I have to say it is a tedious job. But, once I found a nice sweeping rhythm, my job moved along and when I was finished…I was pretty excited. The patio looked great, and I did half of it myself. I jumped around singing…”I did it! I am woman hear me roar,” as the next door St. Bernard barked along with me.

I love that pressure washer and I know next year, I can and will do both those jobs on my own.