Every other Thursday, a very nice woman (whose name is not really Josephine) comes over and cleans our house. Front to back, port to starboard, floor to ceiling, Josephine scrubs and soaks and folds and makes the place look immaculate. After Robert was born, and all throughout the layoff, my wife and I decided that we'd live off of cat food and dryer lint before we cut the cleaning expense. Otherwise, we'd just never get ahead of the constant flow of stuff that breeds like a virus in our little home. That's rather apt, come to think of it: Our apartment is the host for a remarkably virulent and parasitic strain of the Dreck Flu (a/k/a "Binfluenza"), and Josephine is our bi-weekly shot of penicillin.
Yesterday I came home to find all of our laundry folded, Robert's toys stashed away in their bins, spotless and uncluttered countertops in the kitchen, and an omnipresent but not overpowering smell of lemony-piney cleaning products. Everything was cleaned and stored, and for a few fleeting moments order reigned over our two little chaos monkeys.
I was remarking about this to my wife when she went off into the bathroom to wash her hands. I surveyed my orderly little fief and said, "I love coming home on Thursdays. It's like I feel most like a human being once every two weeks."
And my wife swooped out of the bathroom, hands dripping, and said, "What? You want to be peeing on her every two weeks?!?"
