Cleaning Lady

Katie overheard me telling her father that I function best in an ultra-clean environment.  She laughed a long time.  The sound of her laughter is beautiful;  joy bubbles over into the room.  It always lifts my spirits and I enjoyed hearing it, even though I knew she was not laughing with me.  The joke, in her mind, was that she's known me her whole life and has yet to see me achieve anything that could even creatively be described as "ultra clean."  That does not negate, however, the fact that I function best with surroundings that are orderly.

I spend a lot of time cleaning and get very little bang for my buck.  Because of my propensity to get distracted midway, it takes a long time and the threat that one cleaning day will bleed into the next is ever-present.  To be frank, I stink at this.  It's strangely liberating to write those words. Now whenever people just drop by, they will know in advance that they aren't going to find "hotel clean" when they step over our threshold.  I try to get there -- a lot -- I just fail most of the time.  Like right now, for example.  I stopped cleaning to write this post.

Minutes ago, as I was cleaning the house, I thought, "What if when I die, God yells at me?"  What if he says, "Christine, I gave you a gift and you squandered it by spending all your time dusting, cleaning toilets and swiffering?"  Then he might continue, saying,  "Meanwhile you denied someone whose true passion was cleanliness an opportunity to do what she does best.  How do you justify this?"  What will I say?

It is possible that one of my true gifts is rationalizing.  But what if??  Maybe I should consider getting a cleaning lady, just in case.  Covering all your bases, I think that's what the guys call it.