Gracified

Aunt Grace has arrived for her annual Thanksgiving visit.

Which, of course, means I've spent the past week working on the Gracification of our house. Or as I've referred to it in the past "The Biannual Boil". Which basically means that every inch of our home must be boiled, bleached, scrubbed, steam cleaned, ironed and straightened in preparation for the visit. You see, Jimmy's family, and Aunt Grace in particular, are freakishly, obsessively, whackadoo clean. Dare I say obsessive compulsive? Yes, I dare.

And because of my basic pathetic insecurity, I am always struggling to maintain the fiction to the family that I too am very, very clean. Which is...mmm...not true. Over the summer, when I stayed at Aunt Grace's apartment while I was attending BlogHer, I was afraid to touch anything. I actually took pictures with my iPhone so I'd remember how to put everything in the bathroom back the way I found it. I was gratified afterward to hear that Grace had told Mary "You'd never even know she'd been there." The ULTIMATE compliment on Grace's part.

So all last week I went room by room, and did all of those "deep cleaning" chores that I'd been putting off -

1. I sorted and dealt with the ginormous pile of crap that had accumulated on the floor next to my desk. (NOTE: the pile of crap did not actually consist of...crap, but of old bills, catalogues, letters, Jude's art, flyers, books and 436 things that had been sent home from Jude's school. In other words...crap).
2. I climbed up and cleaned off the 1/4 inch of dust that had accumulated on the top of the ceiling fan in Jude's room, which made the normally white fan blades look as though they were made out of charcoal gray felt. And which I had stared at every night for months while I was reading to Jude, but never did anything about.
3. I washed and ironed all the curtains. Jimmy actually walked into the kitchen, gasped and said "Oh my God! Will you look at that!" when he saw the kitchen curtains. Guess I should do this more often.
4. I took out the refrigerator drawers and scrubbed out the science experiment that was growing underneath, thusly finally uncovering the peculiar odor emanating from the fridge. Ewww.
5. I finally pulled out the wood glue, and repaired the two wiggly dining room chairs. The two chairs that for the past two years we've been warning people not to sit in. "NO! Not that one!!!"

But despite all of this preparation, I had saved all of the real boiling - the dusting, Windexing, bleaching, vacuuming, scrubbing, sweeping and mopping - for Saturday, the day before Grace's arrival. I wanted everything to be perfect when she got here. My plan was to clean the house all Saturday afternoon, then wrap Jimmy and Jude in plastic, and stand them on newspaper in the corner until just before Grace's plane arrived.

But then, of course, God bit me in the ass. On Friday night, at about 2:00 a.m., I was awakened. Hmmm. I feel...funny...like I'm going to...and I ran to the bathroom and threw up. I then spent the next two hours vomiting. Or, more colorfully stated, "bowing down to the porcelain goddess".

I was feeling only moderately better when the alarm clock rang at 6:45 a.m. Why 6:45 a.m. on a Saturday, you ask? Because it was time for Jude's Cub Scouts annual Raingutter Regatta. Now, I realize that having spent the night "doing the Technicolor yawn" was an excellent excuse to not take the child to his boat race. But...I am his Akela. And we'd worked so damned hard making that damned boat for the damned race. And because I'm an idiot. And Jimmy had a coaching client coming at 9:00.

So we went to the damned boat race. And his little boat came in Second Place, thank you very much. So proud. The saddest thing about the morning was that I absolutely looked like holy hell, and not one person mentioned it. No one said "Are you okay? You look a bit frail and pallid." Which leads me to fear that they just thought "Well, she's old, I guess this is how she looks in the morning."

And immediately following the Raingutter Regatta, Jude had a soccer game. In the rain. Yes. I know. This was foolish. "Driving the porcelain bus". Yes. But again, Jimmy had a coaching client. And Jude had missed his game last week because he had a cough, and he really, really wanted to go, and...well, his coach is rather attractive.

After all this, I got home and proceeded to clean. And clean. And clean. And dust and vacuum and scrub and Windex and bleach and mop. When Jimmy came in and I finally confessed that I'd spent the night "tossing my cookies", he got kind of mad at me for doing all this stuff. Though, I must add didn't offer to do it himself! He did say that we should "call somebody to do it". Who this miracle cleaning lady is who will show up at the last minute on a Saturday, I DON'T KNOW (do people still say "cleaning lady" or is that an obsolete Texanism?). Anyway, he did take Jude for lunch and a haircut, thus enabling me to finish all my work and finally GO TO BED. So I guess that's something.

Then on Sunday morning, I woke up, felt somewhat better, and started to get ready for church. The plan was for Jimmy and Jude to pick Grace up at the airport at 11:00, and I'd meet them after mass. As I was making Jude's breakfast I suddenly heard...Jimmy throwing up! Yep. It was his turn. "Blowing beets". "Yodeling groceries". Poor, poor thing.

So Grace has arrived. So far she's been forced by Jude to play two games of Candyland and one game of Sorry and to watch two episodes of Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated. Neither of them have thrown up. So far so good.

I am FINALLY relaxing. In our really very clean, thoroughly Gracified house. I need to remember this. How much nicer our home is when it's really very clean. I should very much try to keep it this way. But alas, something always gets in the way. Like..."calling Ralph on the big, white phone". Sigh... 

Comments

[Captain Dumbass]

Yikes. And what a super mom. I would have called off the whole weekend just throwing up once.

[Michele]

If I knew that someone was showing up on a specific day I would have scheduled a cleaning crew to come in the day before. Then JR would have said,"why are you spending money on something we could do ourselves". Then I say,"If we could do it ourselves then why don't we?" Shuts him up every time.

[MommyLisa]

clean is overrated when you have other things like boat building, playing Candyland and other fun. ;)

[VandyJ]

I always intend to clean more, then life happens. I'm good with getting the vacuuming done and keeping the dirty dishes from taking over the kitchen. And the bathrooms--well I clean when they need it, unfortunately with guys they need it often, but Nick helps there.
Clean is nice, but we have to live in our home, so clean doesn't last very long.

[Elizabeth]

YOU are a rock star. And it's funny, but we have quite a few Italiano relatives who've got the obsessive-compulsive clean gene. It's pretty scary, actually. I don't.

[Jan]

"Cleaning lady" MUST be a complete, er, Texanism, because I do believe I'm the only other person I've heard use that phrase, as I wistfully - and hopelessly - wished for one.

"Yodeling groceries" made me literally LOL. I'm so stealing that one.

[Mama Badger]

What do people call it if not "a cleaning lady"? I'm from NY, and that's all I've ever heard them called. "A maid?" I guess I've heard that, too, but only from the incredibly wealthy.

I want to be Michelle. But, unfortunately, I'm more like you. Sorry you had to drop the munchies off for the pool party, though.

[only a movie]

Hoping everyone is staying healthy for the rest of the week.

I went to a grad school seminar for all of Saturday and other half decided to clean my house while I was gone. This is nice, except that I had already cleaned it on Friday. He must be related to Grace...

[Jenni]

Yeah, but if your house looked all fancy all the time, it might not get so much work. You don't want to stunt it's career. Your house has dreams, you know. Dreams of making it big. Dreams of being the next Father of the Bride house. Don't crush those dreams.