I’m exhausted. I’ve been cleaning the apartment in honour of visitors from England who are arriving tonight. ‘A little ol’ apartment?’ I hear you say. ‘How long can that take?‘ Two days, that’s how long. TWO DAYS! This apartment is bigger than my entire house and garden in England. The worse thing about cleaning isn’t the actual dusting, polishing and hoovering. It’s every thing else that goes with it:
1) The ‘amusing’ comments I have to endure: ‘Hoovering?? It’s not Christmas yet you know!’ ‘Are you ill? Shall I fetch the doctor?’
2) Turning into a crazy woman. Usually I’m pretty laid back about food, paint and mud on the floor. Like Joey from Friends when Rachel worries about dropping spaghetti: ‘Rach! Hey, it’s fine! You’re at Barb’s Joey’s!’ But when I’ve cleaned the place, I turn on anyone I think may be trying to sabotage Mission Housework: ‘Who dropped this crumb? Come on. Who was it? Right, that’s it. Christmas is cancelled unless somebody owns up. Oh, and by the way, we’ll be eating dinner in the street tonight.’
3) If life is too short to stuff a mushroom, then it’s definitely too short to waste time attempting to remove glitter from a leather sofa. It actually seems to have been stuck on with cement.
4) The salubrious results of all this hard work last for mere seconds. Every time I turn my back, dust comes out of its hiding place, mocking me as it lands on my freshly polished surfaces. Stray feathers drop on the floor in front of me as I put away the hoover. Whirling dervishes dance behind me, scattering Sylvanians, dirty socks and school bags in my wake.
5) Life always conspires against my dream of a clean home. This time, the minute I’d finished my cleansing ministerings, Beyoncé Bunny came to stay for half-term. I watched, speechless, as stacks of hay, rabbit fur and little brown raisin poops sullied my beautifully clean floor.
Seriously, what is the point??? But at least today I’ll be rewarded with a suitcase full of goodies – Dairy Milk, Cadbury’s Drinking Chocolate, Sunpat Peanut Butter, Pot Noodles. Mmmmm, hurry up food friends…
BARBED WORDS 