This morning, my nerves tingled with excitement, and my mind filled with glee.  Glorious, wonderful, earth-shattering glee.

Oh, you don’t have to blush.  There’s  nothing kinky going on around here.  Not unless hound dogs wearing undies give you a thrill.  No, I think my husband and I would both agree–the event that occurred today was better than the kinky stuff.  Heck, it may be even better than chocolate.  See, today was the day our cleaning lady came to detoxify our home.

It may not sound exciting to you, but to us?  Trust me.  It’s monumental.  I mean, you’ve seen the photos of our house. 

Oh, I know what you’re thinking—a bulldozer would be a more appropriate cleaning tool than a house-cleaner, but hey—beggars can’t be choosers.  And while we really need an industrial strength cleaning about five times a day (at a bare minimum), that’s just a bit out of our budget.  So it’s pretty world-shattering stuff around here when our cleaning lady does arrive, to save us from the monster mounds of dog hair and the assorted piles of baby gunk that threaten to consume us whole. 

Once upon a time, our cleaning lady came one time a month, but we’ve recently switched to this every other month schedule.  The intention was that I would pick up the slack and save money.  Well, I can vouch that the money’s being saved.  As for the cleaning?  Well, one out of two ain’t bad.

So, given the fact that we really, really NEED this cleaning, you’d think we’d have the house picked up in plenty of time for our cleaning lady to do her job, right?  Yeah, maybe in a Utopian society in Never-Neverland (not to be confused with Michael Jackson’s Neverland, although I suppose there are kids involved in both of these scenarios).  In the very pedestrian microcosm of our home?  It never happens. 

What does happen?  Typically, I’m running around the night before (okay, so it’s more like the morning of) the scheduled cleaning, frantically trying to pick up piles of laundry, and clear off counters (amazingly enough, cleaning ladies can’t clean counters when there’s no visible counter space to clean), and fling the million and a half homeless toys into some semblance of order.  Usually, I do the entire house by myself, and the closer it gets to our house-cleaner’s arrival, the more agitated I become.  And invariably, I get grumpy with my husband.  Why?  Because, one can only make so many trips up and down the stairs carting moldy hubby socks, undies, and various other discards that should have been enjoying a long life at the city dump eons ago, without getting bitter.

This time, in the hopes of avoiding the whole grumpy phase, I assigned hubby one small room to pick up.  The loft.  It’s his area, so I figured it made sense if he picked it up.  Silly me.

In case anyone needs to know, this is my hubby’s idea of a tidy house:

Exhibit A:  Does this look tidy to you? (and yes, that is a gi-normous Warhol-esque painting of hound dogs on our wall)

Exhibit B:  dirty husband undies and other assorted nasties

Exhibit C:  more dirty husband undies, accompanied by dirty pants, a doodle paper (undoubtedly filled with “psychopharmacology”, hubby’s favorite word), and an ancient coffee lid

Exhibit D:  Hubby’s table o’ crap

Exhibit E:  Hubby busted with a new Wii game, which was strictly prohibited

Exhibit E:  Apparently, this is where hubby thinks we store extra blankies

At the end of a long day, there’s nothing like having a quiet, undisturbed moment on the couch. 

Um, I meant alone?  Come on now—am I really expected to work under these conditions?

I give up.  Believe it or not, I was here first, and somebody just couldn’t resist pushing her way to the toasty spot behind me.

After awhile, Fergie decides to go encroach on hubby’s space.  Now maybe I can get some work done!

Wow, I guess they don’t make bug vacuums the way they used to:

Or maybe it’s just that they don’t make them Ridgeback-proof.  Hmmm….does anyone know of a good alternative use for this?

So, which Ridgeback do you think looks guilty?  (In case there’s any doubt in your mind—yes, that is a shoe dangling from Fergie’s mouth.)

Seriously—somebody needs to start a line of Ridgeback-proof kids toys.  I think we’d single-handedly make them a millionaire.  Maybe even a billionaire.

From there, they could move on to making a few other choice Fergie-proof items—stuff like shoes and books, sprinklers, beer cans, balls, baby bottles, water slides, gardening gloves, sand buckets, sea shells, and sippy cups.  That’d be a good start, at any rate.