Beware: Spring Cleaning In Progress

This weekend, I am a crazy lady.  I can't help it and I did it to myself.  While broaching the topic of Mother's Day with my honey to find out if we were going to be doing the Mom thing separately or together, together being his preference, I unintentionally set myself up for a massive meltdown.  He wanted to do Mother's Day with his mom on Saturday, but she was booked by his siblings.  My mom was willing to bend to whatever the schedule needed to be,  wasn't that accomodating of her?  I suggested lunch on Sunday.  He didn't want to go out as every nice restaurant on the planet would be a mad house and we couldn't very well ask his mom to cook her own lunch, now could we?  So, without any forethought to the consequences of what I was about to suggest, I suggested we have his parents over to our place for lunch. 

What the hell was I thinking? 

His parents have never been to my place before.  We are in the middle of moving in together.  There's stuff everywhere!  Plus, I was not the world's greatest housekeeper before he and all his stuff arrived, so the house was already in desperate need of a spring cleaning.  I don't want their first impression of my home to be that it needs to be cleaned and decluttered and what is their son getting himself into with this messy woman!

I did not want my living room looking like this
when his parents came over for the first time.

The next day, I managed to shoot myself in the foot again by talking to my honey when I wasn't quite awake.  We were laying in bed, discussing where to watch Saturday's hockey game, and my honey was lamenting my living room TV because it's an old tube screen TV that's gotten a little blurry with age and is nowhere near as big as his massive big screen.  He can't see the puck on my TV.  The score is so small and blurry that he had to use his phone to check the score of last night's baseball game when he turned it on. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  Again with no forethought and no conscious brain activity looking out for me and my best interests, I sleepily mumbled that we should bring his big screen over to the house (in reckless violation of the June 8th agreement) and set it up on top of my entertainment center until we could get a new entertainment center to hold it. He said that would be great and he was sure his parents wouldn't think we were being rednecks by having a TV on top of a TV.



I'd forgotten his parents were coming over. 
What the hell was I thinking?

Clearly, I wasn't thinking.

It took forty minutes of negotiations/arguing to retract the statement.  My honey had realized he could get a rise out of me by playing around with the TV on top of the TV thing and kept insisting he was going to bring it over.  Even as he left for work, he was still saying how excited he was that the big screen was coming over, completely ignoring my repeated cries that NO, it was not coming over.  I even texted him another NO after he left for work.  He thought it was hysterical that I was getting so worked up about the house not looking perfect when his parents came over.  Little did he know that he was only seeing the tip of the crazy lady iceberg.

This morning began too early.  It's Saturday and Saturdays are supposed to be for sleeping late to catch up on all the rest you missed out on during the week.  But, not this Saturday, not for me because his parents will be in my home tomorrow and I hadn't had any time at all to even think about cleaning the house.  I set an alarm for six a.m. because in addition to needing to clean the house top to bottom and go to the grocery store to refill my empty fridge with Mother's Day lunch items, I had to get my emissions test done on my car.  This is the last weekend before the deadline and I had even told my honey to remind me that I had to get it done first thing this morning.  I woke five minutes before the alarm was set to go off and laid in bed thinking I'd get up as soon as the alarm went off.  Well, the alarm didn't go off and I slept in til eight when my honey rolled over and reminded me that I wanted to get to the emissions place early.  Epic fail on the alarm clock!  Maybe it knew I was really tired and needed more sleep.  Maybe the alarm clock was looking out for me today, since I'm not doing such a hot job of it myself.

I blew off the emissions testing after my honey read the reminder notice and saw that they had evening hours on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Time to start cleaning the house!  I started upstairs and my honey went down to tidy up the living room.  Immediately, we had a problem.  My honey hasn't lived here that long and he didn't know where to put anything away.  He knows where to go to find food, to take a shower, to watch TV, and to go to sleep.  Other than that, he doesn't have a clue where I keep things. 

"Honey, where's the vacuum?" 

"Honey, where do you want me to put this?"

"Honey, where does this go?"






In trying to help, my honey was driving me nuts and because we each had our own ideas about the order in which things needed to be cleaned, I was ending up going behind him and redoing everything he had done.  My autocorrecting his cleaning made him nuts.  This wasn't working.  In an attempt to get things back on track and avoid the fight that was starting to brew, I asked my honey to get the garbage from all the bedrooms and bathrooms and when I came down to find two full trash bags I sent him to the dump.  I love my honey, but I don't know if I can have him in the house while I'm cleaning.

This is pretty close to my mood when I am cleaning my house from top to bottom.

While he was gone, I cleaned and mopped two bathrooms, the kitchen, and the front foyer.  When he got back, I announced that the wet kitchen floor made this the perfect time to go to the grocery store.  This was a great idea because it was our first trip to the grocery store where we were getting food to cook a meal together in our home.  My honey got a real kick out of the domesticity of it all. 

Who knew grocery shopping could save the day?

Back at the house, we took a break for lunch.  I looked around my messy living room and dining room and began to freak out about the ton of cleaning still left to do.  My honey said we would get it all done in no time.  Only if we meant me cleaning and him watching sports on TV, my head screamed. 

I had a little meltdown, right then and there.  My honey rubbed my back and shoulders and hugged me, trying to get me to calm down.  He was being so sweet and I was feeling like such a bitch for not wanting his help, but I had to say something to him.  I told him the only help I wanted from him was for him to stay out of whatever room I was cleaning at the time.  He looked at me like I was nuts.  I probably hurt his feelings.  No, I definitely hurt his feelings.  But, I needed to tell him that the best thing he could do was to get out of my way and let me get this done.

He looked a little chagrined, but being a smart man, he let me have my way.  Sort of.  He insisted on tidying up some of the boxes of his stuff in the home office.  Since I was done cleaning in that room, I was okay with that.  He left me alone for about an hour before asking if there was anything he could do to help.  I sent him out to the deck to sweep off the "helicopters" and other gifts from my neighbors' trees.  While he was out there, I finished cleaning the dining room.

I took a break from cleaning when he came back in and went to the kitchen to make the dessert for the Mother's Day lunch.  Shortly there after, I discovered that my rarely used kitchen was missing a whisk which I would need to make the dessert.  "Honey, would you like to help me?  Run to the store and get me a whisk, please."  Perfect!  I finished cleaning the rest of the house while he was out looking for the whisk.  I even asked for a specific brand of kitchen utensil, which slowed him down some.  Whisks he could find, but the OXO brand whisk proved to be elusive.

Now the house is clean, the dessert is ready for tomorrow's lunch, and all I have left to do is cook the pot roast tomorrow morning.  My honey is already making noises about how he will be doing the cooking, but says he might let me help.  If he lets me help the same way that I let him help me today,  I have a feeling I will be banned from my own kitchen tomorrow morning.