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Friday, April 17, 2009

Pre-visit jitters

I get really nervous when people come to visit, my house is never clean enough - nervous is the wrong word, I panic. Seriously. I might execute calm control at work but in my personal life I completely panic and hyper ventilate. Usually it's due to circumstances that am not thrilled to live with but grit my teeth and deal with but am horrified at guests having to witness same circumstances. Earlier this year I had a friend visit and my mom - total panic for both visits. After both visits more panic on how to solve the problem.

Right - I'll get on with it. We have a plague of fleas in our home. We've been dossing the pets for over a year now, washing the dog every two weeks and washing all pet bedding constantly but it's not working and lately it's gotten worse. After more panic and many frustrated conversations about bombing the garage - which seems to have the plague - and my further panic over chemicals from bomb and reading internet stories of failed bombing attempts which mostly seem to stem from stupid people setting off more bombs then what are necessary for space required and we are not stupid people so we came up with the following strategy:

* book hotel room
* put the 3 cats in different cat carriers and line them up into truck
* can't find lid to dog's carrier so throw him in back of truck
* put baby in her car seat carrier
* pack over night bags
* set off bomb in garage
* depart for hotel at 9:30pm at night because wife worked until 8pm which was a really lousy choice considering evening plans

The above was executed last night without a hitch. Cats did not freak out like they normally do when placed in cat carriers. It's like they knew we were saving them from a life of pain and misery. They happily went to hotel room and were quiet the entire night. No one jumped into the babies travel crib. Baby stayed awake throughout the entire adventure to hotel room and blew way past her bedtime but fell asleep without much trouble upon arrival.

This morning we extracted all four animals and baby within 45 minutes of baby waking up. We are stealthy like that.

My mother-in-law arrives tomorrow afternoon. I don't think she will notice the vacuum cleaner in the hallway, or the broom in the living room, or the chairs turned over, or the 3 cat carriers in the dining room - well maybe I can do a little cleaning up before she gets here but I'm sure she will only have eyes for her granddaughter.

3 comments:

Grit said...

what a miliary solution! someone once said to me 'bah! your visitors come to see YOU not your HOUSE' and i really have held this dear, because if i do not believe it then i might die of shame.

but i understand mothers in law are different. and i was certainly terrified my mother would exclaim 'what a tip!' i don't think she ever did say that, but i never quite got over the fear.

now good luck with your bombings and your visitor!

crazywildberry said...

I hope you didn't panic or get nervous when I came a few years ago. I thought your house was nice, it was neat and clean. I thought you and M were bend-over-backward hospitable and I enjoyed my time with you immensely! The room you gave me was comfortable and pleasant. You really needn't worry. :D

R. Molder said...

'what a tip', don't think I've heard that expression before.