A Banner Year!

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I am once again blessed. I’m not hosting dinner.

I’m not hosting Christmas this year either. Which makes it a double-whammy year for me—I get to add hundreds of hours to my work schedule. Hours that would have been spent cleaning. Then cleaning some more until everything was spotless and you could eat off the floor-- which, according to my mother is the measure of a clean floor. Perhaps our relatives ate off the floor at one time and she had those memories, like people have who have lived through the depression and hoard everything.

Last year, I cleaned until all surfaces and crevices glistened. I walked into the dining room only to find that the dog had wrestled with the seventy-six dollar fall centerpiece on my polished table. He’d also eaten much of it-- as evidenced by the vomit on the freshly cleaned area rug under my once spotless table.

I’ve never understood how people could cook everything and also have their house clean. It’s really one or the other to me. Even if you have cleaning help, it’s the hours right before people arrive that set the disasters in motion: The garbage disposal breaks, the cat jumps on the counter and licks the turkey, forcing you to serve Kentucky Friend chicken to 18 guests. The vacuum spits the last several weeks cleaning on your carpet—the carpet you are quickly doing the “spiff clean” on before people arrive.

But not this year. I’ll whip up a salad for a couple dozen people while I enjoy my morning coffee. I’ll watch my son chase the dog around the dining room. I’ll laugh and enjoy the happiness it brings him instead of screaming like a crazed Martha Stewart. “PEOPLE ARE COMING IN ONE HOUR… GO SIT IN THE CLOSET AND DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!”

I’ll look in the bathroom and notice that all of the towels I just creased and put on the rack, ever-so-welcoming, are now soiled and crunched up. And it won’t bother me.

Yes, it’s a good year. I’m not hosting.

Happy Thanksgiving.