Squalor...

Whenever I know that company is coming I always start looking around my home with a more critical eye.

My mother and her beau are coming for a visit this week and so I have been mentally making a list of what needs to be done around here before they arrive.

The yard has been at the top of that list. It's been ignored for months, except by Lily who rolls around in the dirt and the dogs who contribute nothing but poop and pee.

It's not entirely my fault.

It rained for most of June and the first two weeks of July.

Then it got hot and humid. You know how I feel about hot and humid, so when I felt a cool breeze blowing in through the window this morning I knew that the day of weeding had arrived. I tried to enlist the help of the children.

One of them helped for a while until she went on a break from which she never returned.

The other child, whose name begins with an "L" and ends with an "ily", was pretty much a complete pain in my behind the entire time.

She was too cold, required different shoes, needed a shovel, needed a stick, needed the stick Rebecca had, was too hot, was hungry, wanted cereal, wanted more milk in her cereal, the cereal was too soggy, she was too cold, the dogs were too annoying, there was a bee, there was a dead bee, there were red ants, a scary spiderweb, a spider (!), dog poop on the lawn, was hungry for something besides cereal, wanted a waffle, wanted the waffle cut smaller, was cold again, and wanted to go swimming.

I only wish that this was an exaggeration.

Rebecca's contribution to the day was to tell me again and again and in great detail about the noise that her sty made when it finally ruptured. That's right. A story about pus. Sixteen times.

So I weeded and cleaned out the sandbox and powerwashed my fake brick driveway. The flower garden no longer looks like a mini jungle and I sent David out for mulch so tomorrow I can make it pretty and my mother will have no idea that my backyard looked like a vacant overgrown lot just yesterday.

I have some shutters to paint and install onto David's office. By the way, the shutters were free! Someone was tossing them so I stopped the car and sent Rebecca to get them. I was so proud. My little girl's first garbage picking.

The inside of my house? Squalor. Pure squalor. The animals are all shedding and it seems that they like to sit on the stairs and will their fur to fall out in clumps. It gathers and forms into new life which quickly grows larger and develops a very bad attitude. Those dust bunnies are like hells angels, all cussing and intimidation.

Also, remember how when I painted Rebecca's floor white I didn't bother to sand first? Well, now the paint is peeling in a few places so I need to sand those spots and repaint.

I am not showing you pictures of these horrors, you will just have to trust me that Martha would berate me mightly for the current state of affairs.

Don't worry though, I have plenty of coffee and chocolate to keep me fueled these next few days as I whip this rat hole into shape. Stay tuned, if you're lucky maybe I'll have another pus story to tell you!