My Little Helper

I start every work week with a spic and span house. Despite many resolutions, the place is a wreck by Friday. Each weekend I spend a solid three hours cleaning the house. It only takes one and a half hours if Mike helps me. If Mr. Tibbs helps me, it might take four.

Mr. Tibbs is my housecleaning helper. While I’m choking on cleaning fumes in the bathroom, he waltzes in and lies down in the newly scrubbed tub to supervise. When I open the hamper to pull out dirty laundry, he jumps in and then fights me for each piece. He loves it when I clean the floors.

Although you can’t tell on Fridays, I’m a little nutzo about the cleanliness of the floors. I have an arsenal of tools: broom, swiffer, mop, and vacuum. Tibbs loves them all. Cats are supposed to be afraid of vacuums, but not Mr. Tibbs! He cuddles the vaccuum when it’s off. When it’s on, he pays it no mind. I’ve actually vacuumed him with the brush attachment. He thought it was great fun. If he’s sprawled on the area I intend to vacuum, I have to reach down and pick him up to clean the floor beneath him. Nudging him with the roaring vacuum head is ineffective.

He also considers the broom, swiffer, and mop toys and attacks them as I attempt to clean the floor. The swiffer is his very favorite. He jumps on for a ride, biting and clawing the cloth covering. I just continue pushing both the cat and tool across the floor, hoping that the swiffer is picking up the cat hair Tibbs is leaving behind.

I may sound annoyed, but, mostly, I’m amused. While Mr. Tibbs’ cleaning help is of questionable value, his antics distract me from the Sisyphean task at hand. I need a maid so I can play in the garden with the kitties while my house is magically cleaned.

Zoro

Introducing our newest kitty, Zoro...

Yes, I will be that old woman who dies alone and is eaten by her 100 cats.

Night of the Living Octopuses

I arrived at work today to find the cafeteria and convenience store decked out in the October colors of orange and black. Even the new uniforms, pumpkin orange shirts and black pants, fit with the color scheme. Near one register, is a basket of cookies, frosted in bright Halloween orange. The only problem is that the cookies are not in the shape of goblins or witches, but octopuses*. Since when have cephalopods been associated with Halloween? Perhaps they were malformed ghosts?

*If you doubt my use of octopuses, vs. octopi, check out this link.

We Stink

I went out to lunch with my friend D last week and told her how much I’d love to go to Chipotle, but that I’d been forbidden to eat there after the last time I did and then gassed my husband for the following 12 hours.

She laughed and then said, “You sure do talk about flatulence a lot.”

I said, “My house is ALL ABOUT flatulence. Isn’t yours?”

She then revealed that, unless under dire circumstances, she and her husband of two years do not fart in front of each other! When the occasional toot slips out, they joke about the “barking spider,” but that’s it. Either they eat a low-fiber diet, or they can withstand the pain of pent up gas jabbing at their insides much better than I can. She went on to tell me that they did not even pee in front of each other. I was astounded.

While Mike and I don’t sit on each other and fart (as D said her parents did to her), we usually just let them rip when the pressure builds up. We fart in the car, in the theater, while watching TV, sometimes even at dinner. We do have some courtesy. In bed, we warn the other to “batten down the hatches” before releasing gas. In the car, the offender rolls down a window. Recognizing that gas (and elimination in general) isn’t sexy, we hold them in when we do the horizontal mambo.

As for peeing, I don’t give it a second thought. I’ll pee in front of Mike, my friends, my family. In fact, I’ve rarely even seen the back side of our bathroom door. We usually leave it wide open, along with the window. We do close the door if we go #2 - we aren’t completely uncivilized!

Or are we? Of the two or so people who read my sporadically updated blog, how discreet are you about bodily functions? Are Mike and I Neanderthals?