I received a phone call from my dear friend the other day that scared me right out of my carpet slippers. She was coming for the weekend. There was nothing frightful about that, rest assured. I adore Gladys. She’s funny, happy and a gem to hang out with.
It was the second sentence she spoke that made my knees go weak, my heart go all aflutter and made my inner person throw her head back and cry like a little girl.
“I’m bringing Nettie!”
I’ve never met Nettie, but her reputation precedes her. Word on the street is that Nettie is a wonderful person with a great sense of humor who spins a good yarn. But the thing everyone says about Nettie is that the dear gal is a neatnik. Nettie likes things tidy, ship-shape and orderly.
There is nothing wrong with being a neat freak. It’s the neat freak’s visit to your house that sends a gal such as me into a dither.
I don’t have prejudices against neat freaks. I say hello to them when I run into them in the supercenter, wave as I pass them on the street and I can chat it up with the best of them at social functions.
Yet the preparations a gal has to make for a neat freak’s visit are mind-boggling.
We Clinches are not a slovenly lot. We have some stuff put where it belongs, the coffee table has some semblance of order and on the surface of our humble abode, there is nothing alarming. But a visiting neat freak is bound to open the linen closets in search of a blanket, help themselves to the fridge and (I swallow hard as I write) open a drawer to look for a pen.
I got off the phone with Gladys and hit the ground running as I imagined the places Nettie would see. What if she looked under the couch to retrieve a dropped item, went to the laundry room for clean towels, or worse yet, ventured to the basement (our young Charlie’s domain) and saw that he is not so good at organizing the remotes?
I ask you this — how does one prepare for a Nettie on such short notice? A fire hose? A leaf blower? A blowtorch?
I calmed myself down as I replayed the conversation with Gladys in my head.
“You’ll love her, it will be fine,” she had said after my protest of a visiting Nettie. Then she polished it off by really sucking up with, “Your house always looks clean.”
Little did Gladys know I worked for hours in preparation for her last visit and it didn’t even come close to doing what a person had to do for the likes of Nettie.
It’s funny how you never know things are out of place until you prepare for a visit from someone such as Nettie. The laundry needed to be put away, the bathrooms needed sprucing up and the newspapers certainly were not going to take themselves to the recycling bin.
Socks needed mating, heat vents needed vacuuming and heaven help us if the windows weren’t spotted with smears from the dog.
For days I scrubbed, I cleaned and I organized. I put young Charlie in charge of the nether regions of the house and assigned him the task of scrubbing the tubs. I wiped down the counters, polished the backsplash and buffed the chrome fixtures to a glistening shine.
Although I had never met Nettie, I have to tell you this, I didn’t like her. For a week solid I had no time to relax, bypassed the grocery shopping and left the bills unpaid while I readied the facilities. Thankfully, by the time Nettie arrived on that fateful Friday night, everything was ship-shape.
I’m not sure Nettie heard angels singing when I opened the door, but she should have. Our towels were properly displayed, the pencil drawer next to the fridge sang of organization and our cupboards were orderly.
Upon her departure, Gladys whispered in my ear, “I don’t know why you worried so much about Nettie’s visit. Your house always looks great.”
Yeah, right.
Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book “Are We There Yet?” You can reach her by sending an email to [email protected].