One of my worst fears was realized today, and I wasn’t even home to know it. Actually, had I been home, it wouldn’t have happened.
You see, my parents decided to drop by my house to bring one of my Christmas gifts. Sweet. Kind. Thoughtful. What a fun surprise, right? Wrong!
I usually keep my place very clean. Everything put away and organized, for the most part. Sure, don’t open some of the drawers in the dresser, but whose drawers are 100% neat all the time? Anyway, in this last week I’ve let the place go. And I don’t mean just haven’t dusted. I mean dishes all over the coffee table, mail strew on the couch, clothes all over my floor in the bedroom, bed un-made, towels in the hallway in the laundry basket that just need to be put away, dirty pots and pans in the sink (which is a HUGE pet peeve of mine), tupperware containers on the counter that need to be washed and put away. A colossal mess.
It should be noted that my mom is a neat freak. You could walk into her home at any moment and it would be spotless. No matter how hectic her life is or what’s going on. She places high value on the way her house looks, and it’s something she passed down to me. Well, most of the time.
So you can imagine how shocked, disgusted, disappointed, and upset my mom was when she and my father walked into my place and saw the mess I had left.
I called to thank them for the gift and my mom could barely talk to me. She told me that she was utterly disgusted by me and that she didn’t know how I could live in such filth. She said “your father and I raised you better than that.” She told me she had to go.
I feel completely embarrassed and upset. This is not normally how I live, but things have been terrible for me this week (both with a lot of work to do and emotionally). I just haven’t had the energy or the inclination to clean up and make things look presentable.
The first thing I am going to do when I finish writing this is clean everything, no matter how long it takes me, but it feels like it’s all for nothing. Now my mom thinks I’m a pig and that this is the way I normally live my life. Even though she’s been here plenty of times and seen that I normally keep the place incredibly clean and neat. I’m sure she won’t be able to erase the image she saw today from her mind for quite some time, and I am devastated by that fact.
Sounds like something out of a sitcom.
That happened to me too awhile back, even now my family refers to me as a pig, when in fact, my place is neater than all of theirs. You really just want to say, “Follow me around for one day and tell me you want to scrub pots & pans!!”
I really hate it when that happens…parents, gotta love their timing! You do know that Murphy’s Law was in force when that happened.