Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Oh yeah, did I forget to tell you guys that I TOTALLY ROCKED IT?

I'm sure you've been on the edge of your seat this past weekend, wondering whether I did it. Wondering if I got my list done before we left on our car trip. Wondering if I'd walked hand-in-hand with my husband out the front door, humming a vacation tune, or if I'd crumpled into the front seat an hour behind schedule, unshowered and unhappy.

Well, ha! I don't call myself the Wonder Wife for no reason.

Let me tell you, one of the most buoyant moments of my life, to this day, has been meeting Brian at the door of our clean house with a kiss and a June Cleaver smile and saying, "Let's go!"

My hair was clean. I wore clean clothes. The garbage was beside the curb, and there were no dishes in the sink to grow moldy in our absence. The bags were packed neatly in the trunk, and a cooler of chicken caesar salad wraps, ice water bottles, and fresh, clean produce was zipped up tightly on the floor of the car. I had even turned the car around, so as to get a better start out the driveway.

I did it all, friends, with the exception of scrubbing the tile grout and putting on makeup. Instead of these, I finished the laundry and trimmed and shaped my toenails. Both decisions, in retrospect, were much better uses of my time. For one thing, my self-pedicured toes looked cute at Brian's ten-year high school reunion. (Of course everyone noticed! Gee.) Secondly, the pile of laundry that came out of our suitcases was daunting enough. Thank God there wasn't an existing pile on the basement floor already.

Being organized in this way was a feeling I cannot remember ever experiencing. Even the morning of my wedding was a blur of nearly forgetting the wedding bands, leaving my bedroom strewn with clothes and other junk, and hustling around upstairs, crowding into the bathroom with my dad and brothers to brush my teeth. (Yeah, the special moment I'd envisioned - you know, the teary-eyed scene where my daddy would see his little girl walk down the stairs in her wedding dress for the first time - never happened. But thank goodness he was there to keep me from spitting toothpaste all over my pretty gown.) Walking out the door calmly and happily and coming home to a clean space - these are not things I have ever done.

And I've got to tell you, doing it felt darn good. Maybe that was the gateway drug to a life of cleanliness, of organization, of happiness. Hoo. It gives me shudders.

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