Fascinating Stuff.

My mother in law is coming into town tonight.

I love her to pieces and I can't wait. I wish she would live with us, but I think she would miss her husband.

My problem is that when people come to visit me I go bananas and clean for days and days.

I've been cleaning my ass off and am currently burned out. I am checked out and practically drooling on my recliner in front of the television and I still have the downstairs sinks and bathtub/showers to do.

I was doing really well for a while with maintaining a clean house. I would clean sinks and toilets weekly, even when they didn't need to be cleaned. Then I stopped; it seemed like a really silly thing to do. Really.

Yesterday, as I picked up the ten zillion Legos in the upstairs playroom, I tried to tell myself that I would miss the spawn they went away to college. At least, that is what everybody tells me.

It took me twenty minutes to pick up all those Legos, though, and I cursed each and every Lego by the end.

It was a huge BIN that someone had dumped out. For some reason ~ on that day ~ it infuriated me. It was a big speed bump in my cleaning groove.

I had been cleaning bathtubs, toilets, sinks, picking up books, toys, stuffed animals, then bah-BOOOM! It all came to a halt when I turned the corner and saw that bin completely emptied of its contents on the playroom floor.

The Legos were the tiny little hands, heads, bits and pieces. I had to drop to my knees and pick them up individually. I put in an appropriate amount of time, then vacuumed up the rest.

I semi-cleaned our bathroom, too, so when my husband suggested that we go to the beach today I sort of felt like clawing his eyes out.

"What's wrong," he asked.

It was hard to put in to words because I felt SO psychotic. Women take things like cleaning terribly personally. I could feel my brain boil and my eyeball twitch.

"Oh, I don't know," I said. Twitch. "I've been cleaning for three days, and now you are going to bring SAND into my clean house?"

While Chris took the boys to the beach, Maggie and I went through the McDonald's drive through. I ordered a 1/3# Angus Burger, large size fries and finished off Maggie's leftovers.

I cleaned the toilets, then moved on to the outdoors and watered my sad looking flowers and plants. I swept the sidewalk and driveway.

I finished up as a crack of thunder and a flash of lightening ruined the fabulous day of golf and/or the day at the beach for many folks on this Labor Day weekend. Within five minutes it was pouring, and continued to pour buckets for the next hour.

I am still stalled out with the cleaning. The floors need to vacuumed, the master bedroom bathtub/shower need to be cleaned (my mother-in-law probably won't be spending too much time in there, though...), the guest bed needs to be finished up.

She won't arrive until about midnight and I haven't decided whether or not if I will wait up. Midnight is atrociously late for those with two year olds who won't sleep in. My 36-year-old body can't handle the strain of those late nights like it used to. And with all of these four mile runs I have been doing, and all of this cleaning?

And add in all of the flipping out I have been doing at the kids, too? Whew. My body has been through some awfully crazy wild strains lately. I think a normal bedtime is in order.

After I finish cleaning, that is.