My house is
too dirty to be cleaned.
It was a
thought that was simultaneously horrifying and liberating.
The bathroom
was an embarrassment. Layers of grime
coated all surfaces, much like the bathroom in a trendy nightclub, or abandoned
gas station. I wondered if I could get
someone else to clean the bathroom instead of me, someone like The Husband, or
the six-year-old, or perhaps the cat.
Speaking of
cat, her litter box was ready to revolt as well.
I shook my
head and walked out, without even bothering to brush my teeth (which is why I
had gone in the bathroom in the first place).
Looks like I was going to have my own Death Breath Super Power
today.
I walked
into the kitchen, which was no better.
The tile floor, for example, looked like it might not have been cleaned
this week, or ever. The stove was
covered in so many grease marks that I started to wonder if The Husband had
secretly replaced our white stove with a Dalmatian model. At least the sink was clean, I hoped, but I
could not really tell for sure since the teetering stack of dirty dishes was
blocking my view.
The living
room appeared as it had been hit by an angry tornado of school papers. There were PTA fliers, old homework, field
trip permission forms, and basketball sign-up sheets (from two seasons
ago). These cozied up to newspaper
articles that The Husband “might want to reread, so don’t throw those away,”
random Lego pieces, and old candy wrappers that Short was “definitely going to
use for something, I’m not sure what, but I need to keep them.”
I did what I
always did when confronted with a great amount of work: complained to The Husband about it.
After
listening to my diatribe, he nodded and said, “Why don’t you just call a
cleaning lady? We have had one a few
times before. We can afford it.”
It was not a
matter of money, did he not see that? I
shook my head sadly and said,
“I can’t
hire a cleaning lady. Our house is too
dirty. I would be embarrassed.”
“MOV, come
on! I’m sure she has seen a lot worse
than our house. Just make the
call.”
In the end,
my pride got the better of me, and I cleaned the house myself. I used the money I saved to invest in some
extra equipment that will help me the next time such a crisis arises: wine.
MOV
