humble pie

There are some secrets I would rather not share. I keep them fantastically hidden from most everyone but my husband and children. They are things that would mortify me if people knew. They are things that would humiliate me so badly I'd have to leave the state.

And today, they were discovered.

So, in the spirit of learning humility - I'm going to take a real leap and share my deepest darkest skeletons with everyone else - no more secrets for me.

A dear friend came over today to clean my house. As if that wasn't mortifying enough, she warned me that she would be upset with me if I cleaned before she got here. (Boy, does she knows me.) Luckily, I avoided ticking her off because I simply didn't have the energy to do anything beyond making my bed and shutting my bedroom door. (But as you'll see later, even that didn't help.)

I was laying on the couch sick to my gut when she arrived, breezy and beautiful. What I wouldn't give to wear make-up again - can't even remember when I last put on some lipstick.

She asked what I wanted done. (I almost confessed that I'd really just like a fairy godmother to say bibbedy-bobbedy-boo. But that would have been rude.) So I swallowed the first piece of humble pie and pointed to the kitchen floor, in dire need of a scrubbing. She got right to work, while I cringed inside, wondering at how much food really was stuck underneath the bench where two piglets slobber their meals.

She finished the floor and started working on the dishes in the sink. (I think one pot had been soaking for four days - but it sometimes takes that long to get clean, doesn't it?) In the meantime, the kids started a brave plan to destroy any progress she made in the kitchen by getting all the lunch stuff out. After that mess was cleaned up she got back down under the table to sweep up the bread crumbs and whatever else got dropped.

I would have been content with all that, but she was determined to really make me learn a lesson today. "Laundry?" she asked. (I swore there was a gleam in her eye.) Um, no that's okay. She didn't buy it. (Who would in a house of four boys?)

I swallowed hard, led her upstairs to my bedroom, and opened the door to show her the eight loads of clean laundry piled on the floor, needing sorting and folding. Then I made a huge mistake. I entered the laundry room to check on the wash I had started this morning. The load in the dryer wasn't dry, so I put it going longer, shut the door and cringed at all the clothes I had to walk over just to get into the room and the smell of all the dirty dish towels (you know the smell, I know you do.)

She folded all the clothes upstairs, then called the boys in to help her identify what belonged to whom. And somehow she convinced the older two to put their things away - and I didn't hear any whining!

She then came down the stairs with a puzzled look on her face. "Where's your dryer?" (I tried to fake sleep - it didn't work.) "I'm not going to tell you," I insisted. But, she figured out how to get the boys to divulge family secrets.

By the time she was ready to leave, I was ready for a nap. I humbly thanked this angel who didn't seem to mind what the condition of my house was and went upstairs to nap with boy #4, only to find that she had scrubbed the bathroom floor, cleaned all the toothpaste off the mirror and the sink and neatly placed three baskets of folded laundry by my closet. And, she put a load of wash in the dryer and another one going in the washer. I hope she had her eyes closed when she was in that disaster area.

I fell asleep to the hum, squeak, hum of the dryer, the rumbling of the washing machine and the whooshes of the dishwasher going downstairs. Who says housework isn't tiring? As I was drifting to sleep, I suddenly remembered her parting words: "I'll be back!"

Aaah! So much for sleep...