I would fire me

This weekend I had a couple of house-keeping embarrassments, and I would just like to say that if I were the maid, getting paid to keep this house all clean and tidy - I would be so fired right now.

My first big embarrassment is our microwave. I rarely use the darn thing - mostly just for popping popcorn and boiling water for oatmeal packets. So why does is always seem to be all crusty and gross?

Sunday evening we had a young couple from Nathan's work over for dinner. The house was pretty tidy - I vacuumed Saturday night, and Nathan vacuumed under the table just before they got here (now that Sam is gone we have to vacuum under the stinkin' table 3 times a day - I miss that dog.) The kids tidied up their rooms and their "areas" (each of the girls have an area they are responsible for keeping tidy - Emily does a better job of this than Hannah.)

The roast was moist and tender, the mashed potatoes were creamy, the gravy had great flavor, and even my food storage rolls turned out fluffy and tasty. I was all out of flour so I ground some wheat and found a can old flour down in the basement, but the taste of the flour was a little off, so I wasn't sure how the rolls would turn out. They were a pleasant suprise.

Dinner was great, the kids were cute, and no one spilled any red punch on the carpet. It looked like a success until the baby got a little fussy and needed her bottle warmed up. Oh horrors. I had forgotten about the custy-splattered-refried-bean-remains in the microwave. But I remember as soon as he popped open the microwave door. Yikes!

They didn't run out of the house screaming, so I let my embarrassment go, and we decided to play Sequence with them. The girls won, as usual.

Then, as they were leaving, Nathan opened the coat closet by the front door to hand them their jackets. 4 backpacks, 3 mittens, 1 raincoat, 3 rainboots, 2 sets of scriptures, one Big Big Loader game, and my knitting bag came tumbling out... Whoah - what a mess. Can't anyone put that stuff away? Sheesh. How embarrassing!

I remember this time last year I went to visit my friend, Bobby. She was seriously sick, and I was picking up her son for the day. Her house was, of course, spotless. I opened her same coat closet (we all have identical houses in our military housing area) to get Tyler's shoes and jacket. All of their jackets were evenly spaced, hanging on pretty, matching, wooden hangers. Their shoes were stacked on an attractive wooden shoe rack. There were no crunched up leaves or wadded up school papers. They did not have a leaning tower of backpacks and boardgames.

Someone needs to give our maid a kick in the seat. Maybe if she spent a little less time on the computer, the closets would be a little cleaner.... Hey, you there, in front of the keyboard - Get To Work!