The Closet Where The House Cleaning Fairy Does NOT Live

As I have confessed before, I hate house cleaning. And as I have pointed out before, this is not a great thing if you're a housewife, which I am.
I realize that almost no one really enjoys house cleaning, although I have heard it said that Virgos do. I wonder if this is true. I also wonder if people still dabble in the ancient astrological arts the way we used to. I was never a good hippie when it came to astrology. I mean, I knew my "sign" (Leo) although a friend of mine who really believes that stuff did my chart once and pointed out that really, I'm far more Cancer than I am Leo because of my moons and stuff. See- I never got that. What house is your moon in? Well, my Moon is right here in the house in Lloyd.
But if people don't do astrology anymore, what has taken the place of "What's your sign?" as the very worst and lamest pick-up line in bars? Since I'm old and never go to bars anymore (and dammit, I miss bars) I haven't heard any good pick-up lines lately. Well, Mr. Moon might try one out on me now and then, but we're usually in the kitchen, not a bar, and he knows my sign so his lines are more along the lines of "Can I make you a martini?" which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, depending on who washes the dishes.
And whether or not I've been doing housework.
Because nothing, NOTHING in this world makes me as crazy and uninterested in romance as house cleaning.
Oh, I love a clean house. Who doesn't? And if there were a house-cleaning fairy, I'd hunt that bitch down and force her (him?) to come live in the little closet under my stairway. I'm pretty sure that something's living there already because the wrapping paper I keep stored in there gets shredded up and there is suspicious poop-looking material on the floor sometimes, but I'd clean it up and put in a cot for a house-cleaning fairy.
You bet!
Because I just hate cleaning.
It's not the work as much as the fact that every person in this house plus the four dogs contribute to the dirt, mess, dust, disorder and nastiness and yet, I'm the only person who regularly does anything about any of it.
I will say that yesterday one of my living-here-daughters cleaned a bathroom and the other living-here-daughter actually put in a lot of hours doing things like dusting and organizing and even scrubbing a rug and cleaning the stair risers with MAGIC ERASER (and as I have also said before, that shit is MAGIC!) and they look about ten thousand times better than they have since we've moved in here over four years ago.
But back to my bitching.
I worked yesterday for approximately twelve hours and all I got cleaned was my room and two bathrooms. Of course "my" room is also my husband's room (we're not THAT old) and I spent hours of that time cleaning out my closet.
And my bathroom, which is my favorite room in the house, takes hours on its own because it has wood furniture in it, as well as a tub AND a shower.
So it took me a long time and of course I didn't have the air conditioning on and I kept having nuclear melt-down hot flashes and I was also doing laundry and by the time I was through with the scrubbing, sweeping, dusting, wood-polishing, mopping and laundry, I was not only exhausted, but in a very, very bad mood.
When the man got home I was still in the middle of it and I took one look at him and said, "What are you doing home?"
He said, "I could leave."
I said, "So could I."
See what I mean about house cleaning and romance?
The reason I'm doing all this crazy cleaning is that the cake-baker/sanity-maker and her husband are coming to visit this week and it's richly ironic that I'm cleaning for her because we fell in love with each other, me and the cake-baker/sanity-maker, one night when a mutual friend called us both "sluts of housekeepers." Yep, that's what she said. Standing in my house.
The cake-baker/sanity-maker and I looked at each other and the birds began singing and the stars started shining and that was it. We knew we were destined for forever-love.
And the mutual friend, realizing her incredible social blunder said, "But you're both great cooks!" and a romance was born and we no longer speak to the mutual friend.
And when we visit each other we always say things like, "Now I better not get one whiff of Fabuloso when I walk in that door," and so forth, but we always clean our houses when the other is visiting.
And put flowers by the bed. I'm sort of surprised we don't throw rose petals on the sheets.
And THEN we make each other fantastic feasts and bake crazy good cakes and the men shake up martinis and we dine by candle-light.
In our beautiful, clean houses.
And we frequently make a toast to the mutual friend whom we don't talk to anymore for bringing us together.
And that's what we'll be doing this weekend, my friend the Taurus and me the Leo, and our husbands, of course, and there will be no Virgos involved unless the house cleaning fairy which does not live in my house is one.
Right here. Where the Moons are in Lloyd and the sun is in July and the house will be clean.