Best two hours ever spent!

"Hello, my name is Kathy and I am a bad housekeeper."

"Hi Kathy!"

Truer words were never spoken. I will deny it no longer. I'm coming out out of the closet...if I can manage to climb over the old curtain rods, rollerblades (2 sizes two small), rubbermaid tub of baby clothes my daughter outgrew 12 years ago, deflated basketball, and the box of craft supplies that I swear I am going to get to some day. I will stop my red-faced attempts at maintaining the facade of being a woman in control of my life. I am the WORST housekeeper in the world.

I blame my family.

I am but one third of the life force living in this house. One-fifth if you count the cats. HEY WAIT there's that hermit crab...ok, I am one-SIXTH of the life force.

And the only one who really doesn't make a mess around here is the hermit crab.

The thing is, see, I wasn't always like this. When I lived alone I had a tidy place. I loved my single-chick apartment. LOVED IT. I was a mostly-carefree career girl who loved to get out and go places, have adventures, see the world. Which is how I met and eventually ended up falling in love with a man who lived on the other side of the country.

"First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage".

Somewhere in there I lost it. I LOST CONTROL. I have lots of theories on the whys and hows. It all makes great sense. I could sit here for quite a spell and tell you all my theories. In fact, let's do that - I'll put the tea kettle on, we'll get comfy...and then I don't have to actually get up and FACE THE MESS.

Look up "Housekeeper" in the dictionary and it will say "NOT KATHY'. There will be a picture of me, smiling in denial... with a red slash across my face.

You get the point.

Now we get to the good part. (Good for me, I mean). Today my friend "K" came over to help me. Does that make me too lame for words? "I can't take care of my own house, waahhh!" Yep, I felt pretty lame. "K" is one of those artsy women, you know the ones. She can take a dead tree branch and turn it into a gorgeous wall sconce for holding votive candles. The kind that I always wished I could be but just don't have the knack or the talent. (She has one heck of a green thumb as well but since we won't be seeing anything green here in New England for at least another month, I'll wait to tell you those stories).

It turned out to be wonderful! Incredible! Totally FABOO!!! We focused on my baker's rack in the kitchen, which, while holding useful and important stuff, also tends to get clogged up with lots of not-so-useful and really unimportant stuff. Valentine's cards I bought six weeks in advance but never got around to mailing, birthday gifts for folks whose birthday is four months away, odds and ends that go someplace else but ONE of us was too lazy to put it back where it belonged. (One of us....I'm not sayin'....might be me....could be me....OKAY IT'S ME, ALRIGHT!?!? Enough already with the guilt!!)

We spent two hours visiting, tossing and sorting ...this goes back to the living room bookcase, that can go to Good Will, save this for the church yard sale, etc. (Yes, I am that lame.)

In fact we enjoyed the time together so much we're going to do it again. I figure, if she comes over for two hours every Monday morning, my house should be looking fabulous by the year 2010. July 17, 2010. Write that down. You're invited for tea.