Getting with the program is hard.

Heheh- I said "hard." Yes, I can be a thirteen-year-old boy sometimes.


So my mom and dad are coming this weekend to see me and E, and take us to my cousin's baby shower. They will be spending the night on Saturday night, which is why I haven't been blogging the last couple of days. My mom is a clean freak. There may be something seriously wrong with her- as she's gotten older she's become more... aware, let's say, of cleanliness issues. She doesn't just dust and run the vacuum. She cleans out the drawers, wipes them down and then puts the stuff back in them. She worries about the dust on the tops of cabinets. The TOPS of cabinets. Up near the ceiling! A few weeks ago she called me because she was embarrassed that, when she hosted the weekly card game at her house, someone noticed something up near the ceiling in her house and she hadn't had time to clean it, so they could all see that her ceiling wasn't clean! The ceiling!

OK, maybe it's me- I'm just becoming more... aware, let's say, of cleanliness issues myself. As E becomes more active and gets into more stuff, I find myself cleaning out the drawers more, keeping things out of the corners, and hunting dustbunnies on a more regular basis. Everything she sees that's different either gets put in her mouth or brought out into the light of day where others can behold its mysteries, so if it's gross or dead or crumpled up something-or-other, I try to get it out of the house before E discovers it. But I'm not so overly concerned with cleaning most of the time that I bother to clean under or over things-- mostly just the eye-level stuff. And the terlet, of course. One's bathroom must always be clean. After all, we poop in there.

So after I come home from work, fix dinner, feed me and E and she goes to bed, I have been cleaning. Mom and Dad will be staying in the guest bedroom, which also doubles as our catchall room. Don't get me wrong- I'm not rearranging the room and getting rid of all the crap. I'm just tidying it up enough that it doesn't look like the crap-catchin' extra room. And I have to clean the bathroom (again, 'cause we poop in there) and get the laundry hidden downstairs in the laundry room. At least for now, I have that luxury. Once we finish the mudroom/laundry room/half bath remodeling (I should blog about THAT. THAT's been quite the hilarious undertaking!), I will no longer be able to heap mounds of unwashed laundry downstairs in the basement where nobody can see it.