Preparing for the Parents

Okay... so I'm not normally one to freak out when I get company. Well, relatively I don't, anyway. I do the normal last minute straightening up and de-cluttering of stuff so my living area at least looks presentable - I can always close bedroom doors. You know... what anyone probably does before company (unless they are those minimalist types that own nothing - you always see those types on movies, yet, I don't know a single one!). But in just over a week, a different type of company is coming... the parents.

Now, my Mom is probably reading this laughing. But in all honesty, I'm freaking out a little bit about getting my house ready... it's been over six years since they've been up to my house from FL, and then I had just moved in, so I wasn't fully settled yet. I had an excuse. But now I'm settled... overly settled! I walk around seeing things and wondering "what will Mom/Dad think of this?" or imagining the look on their faces when they see something. It's not that my house is chaos... I just think I inherited my mother's need of things needing to be perfect for company, no matter if it's family or otherwise. And right now, my house is nowhere near perfect by the standards I have set in my own mind! So what's a girl to do?

Well... I have a week. Granted, I have to work in there... and there's other social obligations to attend to. But I have a week. A week to pull out all the necessary stops, go through all the bottles of soft scrub necessary, and bleach the hell out of any solid surface I see. Thankfully, I cleaned and reorganized some of my rooms while I was unemployed... but it wasn't the whole house.

So I apologize now to any of my friends out there I see (or don't see because of this) over the next week. If you see me and I smell of heavy duty cleanser, this is why. If I look like I haven't slept, this is why. If I seem a wee bit more OCD than usual... this is why.

Okay Mom (and Dad, probably more-so)... you can quit laughing now. I may not have been big on cleaning and yardwork and chores when I was growing up, but somehow, you still drilled the need for it into me. Remind me to thank you for this compulsive behavior when you get here.