Is there ingrained, in every woman in the world, a sense of urgency with regards to cleaning one's house in preparation for a party?
Saturday night we had a group of 10 or 11 people over for drinks, then we all went out to dinner and then came back for desserts, drinks, and fun.
Saturday I spent from dawn until dusk cleaning like we were hosting the fucking Queen. Does behind the toilet really need to sparkle? Is anyone going to look behind the toilet? Are our women guests going to quietly excuse themselves to the bathroom and then inspect behind the toilet? Will they write up a small report in "Behind the Toilet Quarterly"? "At the Avitable household, I performed a white glove test behind the toilet, around the edge of the mirror, and inside the cabinet drawer. While a bit more attention to detail could be appreciated, maybe by using a toothbrush to really bring out the shine, I heartily give the behind the toilet at the Avitables 4 out of 5 daisies."
The same goes for the guest rooms. I spent literally two hours cleaning one of the guest rooms, including moving furniture, putting books on shelves, removing electronics and rearranging the closet, only to have our guests exposed to that particular room for less than ten seconds during the tour of the house. *Click* the light goes on. "And this is the guest room," my wife says. *Click* the light goes off. I think I'm just going to take a very high resolution picture of the room, blow it up to a poster, and tape it to the door. Then, we can just shut the door to the guest room and it will look immaculate.
Finally, how is it that the pile of paper and bills on the counter becomes my pile when we're about to have a party? "Have you gotten rid of your pile?" "Don't forget to clean up your pile!" "If you don't clean up that pile I will stab you between your eyes with this spoon!" I finally get around to cleaning up my pile, which consists of bringing into my office and adding it to the other miscellaneous crap that gets shoved in here as part of "cleaning up". My office becomes the repository for every random box, book, magazine, item of clothing, pet toy, blow-up sex doll, and hooker boot in the house. And then my wife thinks it's funny to walk in and ask why my office is such a mess!
I wonder if my housekeeper would just start coming every day?
