I love having a clean house. I despise cleaning my house. Ergo, housecleaner. A Metamuvillian comes to my house twice a month to push Dex's errant kibble around with a broom. On two occasions where her husband was otherwise occupied, she's asked if she can bring her toddler. I grudgingly okayed it.
Yesterday she was scheduled to come at 10am. She requested pushing it to noon. At noon, she called to say it would be 4:30. At 4:05, she pulled down my driveway. I noted the exact time of her arrival because I was in the hot tub. Naked.
Not one, not two, but three screaming kids spilled out of the car, ages 2, 7, and 10.
I pause now to remind you (if not her) that I work from home.
It took the 7 year old a microsecond to start bounding loudly down my deck, from which he launched his body six feet to the ground. He also sprayed Windex on my humidor, my floor, and the afghan Elizabeth crocheted me. The oldest stood on Dex's bed in order to climb my very expensive mounted binoculars, atop which rest my even more expensive camera. The youngest merely threw open pudding cups to the floor. And he tormented Dex, confined to her crate through the whole ordeal because of her recent surgery.
I was outside, venting to Allie on the phone, when I looked inside and saw the seven year old using his grubby hand to brush his food crumbs off the just-cleaned glass coffee table on to the just-mopped floor. Suddenly inspired to race through my house screaming, he then trampolined off the couch, making sure to land in the crumbs and deposit the pillow that goes against my face into said pile.
"How does this sort of stuff happen to you?" she asked. "I mean, it happens to the rest of us maybe once a decade. It happens to you every week."
I don't know. Apparently I was Idi Amin in a previous life. Oh wait...our lives overlapped. Perhaps Hitler, then. Or Pontious Pilate.
I went back inside to sweep up the debris. It was Goldfish crackers.
"Say," I asked, already knowing the answer full goddamned well. "Are you missing a Curious George book?