No, this is not an April Fool's joke.
Yes, I should be doing something else right now. But I'm at that laugh or cry junction and I'm using you to get through it.
I have previously addressed my spic and span deficiency. I stayed in the corporate world much longer than I was happy for the simple fact it bought me a housekeeper.
Writers don't get housekeepers. We're lucky to have houses.
I can cook. I can pick wines. If you turn the lights down low and light a lot of candles, partygoers think it's for effect. I will maintain basic hygiene, but clutter is my friend and the cats are the only ones who can see the baseboards without an obnoxious effort.
But today I donned the yellow gloves and cranked up some rust-belt rock and roll. The house is being shown tomorrow and I gave myself a day's pass from writing to make friends with my inner Mr. Clean.
I started in the kitchen, scrubbing the white cabinets and polishing the wood floor. As it dried, I ran to the store to pick up a few last minute ingredients for an impromptu pasta party tonight. (Stay with me, these details will count).
Within an hour one big pot of meat sauce was simmering alongside a puttanesca (hold the anchovies) pot. After doing the floors and polishing the two front rooms I drained the fat off the meat pot. Six pounds of ground beef and sausage just about filled the large empty crushed tomato can. The next hour hummed along nicely with only a break to replace the batteries in the Swifter (until that point I didn't know it had batteries).
I was actually marvelling at the function of the new flushable toilet brushes when the dog barked, the door bell rung and there was a crashing noise loud enough to be heard over Springsteen. I immediately suspected the cats, but ran to the door with flop-mop toilet brush in hand. A photographer for a real estate magazine needed me to move my car to photograph the house. As I grabbed my keys I saw no damage in the living room and ran back outside with yellow gloves in place, taking them off and leaving them on the pasenger seat when I came back in.
I had forgotten about the indoor crash until I saw the kitchen. The sudden commotion had obviously caught a cat-who-wasn't-suposed-to-be-on-the-counter unaware. A half dozen grocery items were on the floor in a pool of tomato/meat grease that had splattered a good four feet up the opposite white cupboards.
The guilty party was nowhere to be found, nor were the other two, clearly fearful of taking the rap.
The cupboards were approachable. The coagulating pool on the wood floor was frankly too deep and disgusting to touch.
An inspiration came as I picked up a roll of paper towels and became to unroll a dozen squares. I dropped the wad on the floor to absorb some of the carnage. Then another. Then another. It seemed to work, so I kept building grease and paper piles. The spill was contained. I considered a second career in hazardous materials.
At this point a thinking person would have retrieved the rubber gloves from the car, but I was on a roll. I pushed one wad with my bare left foot toward the center, then another with my right. Emboldened by my success, I pushed more farther and faster... creating two grease skis which knocked me promptly on my butt. My favorite shorts are apparently quite absorbent. It took three tries to stand upright in an unwitnessed scene that would have been too ridiculous for Lucy and Ethel.
I had to hose myself off outside before I could come in and change my clothes. As I'm writing this I'm trying to decide if my tailbone really hurts that much or if it's a reflexive fear of returning to the kitchen.
The youngest cat just jumped up on the desk.
He is, of course, smirking.


Copyright 2004 Judi Griggs