Throwing in the Towel

As anyone who has read Douglas Adams knows, it's of the utmost importance to always know the exact location of your towel. While I do, in fact, know the location of my towels, pretty much the rest of the house is in a state of disarray that is generally the result of having a half-dozen frat boys in residence, with perhaps a goat.

Sigh.

I like to think that I have many good qualities and I certainly appreciate beauty and order; I just don't seem to have the gift of creating that in my own surroundings all that often.

For the last month, I've fought this. I had plans, by which I mean I Had Plans. Over spring break, I was going to work on my presentation for this month's conference in San Antonio* and I was going to scrub, polish, and clean. Heck, I'd probably have time to learn Italian while I was at it!

It's good to have plans, isn't it?

So things didn't work out as I had planned and I was beginning to despair. Seriously - at some point the lines were crossed from "tolerable" to "messy" to "yike!" I felt like a sloven and I felt downtrodden about that. I mean, I can juggle the planning and grading of six college classes, maintain a healthy and loving relationship with my shiny-cyborg husband, eat decently healthy food (most of the time), research and write my independent work for presentation and publication, yet I can't manage to keep a clean house? Why is that?

Oh, right. It might be because of the work that goes into the planning and grading of six college classes, maintaining a healthy and loving relationship with my shiny-cyborg husband, eating decently healthy food (most of the time), as well as researching and writing my independent work for presentation and publication.

There are times where the sensible thing to do is to call in the professionals. It goes against my somewhat-Calvinist upbringing, but I'm having a very nice lady come in tomorrow and scrub, polish, and clean. I have a counter brimming with cleaning products ranging from white vinegar to Ka-Boom! and a trifecta of mops. I have been reassured that the remnants of Spooky-hair will vanish, my ceiling fan blades will gleam and my bathroom tile will sparkle.

And that, Dear Readers, is so very worth paying for, at least occasionally.

* By the way, do you think the defenders of the Alamo in what is now San Antonio worried about the cleanliness of the baseboards in the fort? Exactly. It's all about priorities. (Although they were fighting in large part for the right to keep their slaves, since Mexico had abolished slavery, so maybe that's not the best role model I could pick. Yeah - that part gets left out of the movies.)