I want a maid. No, not for any sexy-time straight man fantasy play. I want a maid for MY greatest fantasy – someone to clean my friggin house. As I have noted before, housekeeping is not my forte. It’s not even my pianissimo. To say I don’t care for cleaning would be like saying the Radical Right gets a little fussy about gay marriage. I abhor it. I loathe it. I would rather be beaten about the face with by rotten-banana-wielding carrier monkeys. But alas, as my poor wife works terribly long hours and the children are even worse at cleaning than I am, the job falls to me. Which could be why it looks this way in my house all the time.
In any case, I think someone should donate free house cleaning to me. Why? Because I’m awesome. I am a creative, wonderingly wonderful free spirit who cannot be contained by such horrid domesticity! Okay, okay. Because I’m broke. And I suck at cleaning. And I have one Melissa, two children and six animals to pick up after, which would give even Martha-frickin-Stewart a psychotic break. You’ve read my blog about the pop-tart incident, yes? Oh, you haven’t. Okay, then. Search the history. I’ll wait. No really – go read it. Yes, now. [insert Jeopardy music here]
Oh, you’re back. Good. So now you see what I’m up against. Not only do my children leave little presents in the form of nose-nuggets on my walls, but my own partner (who I used to think was on my side) can drop an entire pop-tart into the couch cushions and not wonder where it went or if she should go after it.
And to make matters worse, we have company coming to stay in two short weeks. I know that seems like plenty of time to get a house in order. But when you have nine living beings going right behind you to eff it all up, it becomes a circular task of the worst kind. Thankfully, the imminent visitor is an animal lover, and a multiple-animal owner, so she will undoubtedly understand if there is still fur on the furniture or a random hairball that we somehow missed because it blended with the carpet color. However, she does not have children, and I fear that the mess they create may send her screaming down the sidewalk and running to the nearest drug store for the Plan B pill, lesbian or not.
My only hope is that I can find a way to restrain *ahem* distract the children long enough to get the bulk of the cleaning done, and then somehow locate the energy (read: coffee mainline) to run directly behind them for a few days and pick up everything they drop/wipe/cough up.
Which brings me to the next issue compounding my distress – next week is Spring Break. I know this phrase is supposed to conjure wonderful, freeing, party pictures of college students drinking on the beach. But when you are a parent, all it conjures is whining, griping, begging, sibling rivalry, larger grocery bills, and an exponential increase in wall-wipings and laundry. Adding that to the imperative cleaning efforts honestly makes me want to give up and drown myself in a bathtub full of red wine.
But as I mentioned, I am woefully, starving-artist-broke. So unless I want to lay face down in a shallow bowl of red wine (which would be all I could afford), I’m going to have to put on my big girl britches and deal with it. And in all reality, I would probably fail in my drowning efforts and end up spilling the shit all over the place, just making one more mess for me to clean up. I really don’t need that. Besides, wasting wine is an even graver sin than a dirty house around here.
So remember me, little readers, when you come home to your quiet houses with their clean floors, tidy kitchens, and booger-free walls. And if any of you are feeling like you need to be giving to those less fortunate, I have a wonderful way for you to channel that energy. So grab some Zyrtec, a gas-mask, and a vial of penicillin.
I’ll be waiting for your call.
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