The Divine Intervention Needed to get my house Semi-Clean

I haven't told you about the day The Great Divine rang my doorbell. Instead of the usual ding dong, I heard a glorious orchestra and a beam of light came shining through my door.

It was my neighbor. The mother of an 11 yr old girl. She came to ask if I would be interested in having a little help this summer. Hmmm..... there goes that music again... aaaahhhh ahhhhhh.... "Would I be interested in having her daughter come over once a week as a Mother's Helper" aaaaahhhhhh ahhhhhhhh........ squinting through the tears and the ray of sunshine at her back, I replied "yes, that would be great" then this gift from up above adds " and I don't want you to pay her, I would like it to simply be a lesson in responsibility" aaaaaahhhhh ahhhhhhh. I think she thought I was a little creepy when I started kissing her feet, but still she kept to her word, and her daughter has been coming over every Tuesday morning for 3 hours. 3 amazing, soul feeding hours. Ok, not that soul feeding, I usually just end up folding laundry and cleaning my own bedroom. But still, I fold and clean with out a child undoing everything do, and I usually get to watch a talk show or other mindless dribble that isn't a cartoon. Very exciting in this little world of mine.

Here's the kind of funny part, though. I think my dear little helper is a bit of a germ phobe. That, or the filth of my house has propelled an otherwise normal 11 year old into an obsessive hand washer. So each Tuesday morning, I wake up a little earlier than usual to clean the downstairs (oh, please, you didn't think I would do the entire house, did you?). All the toys get put away, the floors get vacuumed, and if I don't have time to mop, I at least try to get some of the dried food off the kitchen floor. I even wipe off the table. But she's still constantly washing her hands. And I'm deeply effected by the fact that an 11 year olds opinion of my cleaning abilities actually matter. I wonder what she goes home to tell her Mom. Perhaps next year she'll volunteer her son to come over and clean my house once a week, you know, to teach him some responsibility.

Soon the summer will end, Tuesdays will return to simply being the second day of the work week and my house will once again be dirty on this day. Summer is such a fleeting time......