Priorities

Our next door neighbor, who recently redid her whole front yard to replace lawn with a bunch of different kinds of plants and flowers, is having excavations performed with a little Cat (a deck? we speculate), our behind-the-backyard neighbor has a totally impressive garden, with two nice straw-covered plots and a lot of little raised beds tucked like into corners and stuff.

We have a newly roto-tilled garden plot which currently plays host to three tomato plants and three pepper plants. We also have, apparently, roots in the septic system again. This happens like once a year or so. The result is, of course, a slow drain in the tub and a toilet that will swirl and swirl, but not flush.

I've called the rental company (incidentally: we love our rental company; they always send a letter before they come to inspect our furnace or our fire extinguisher, and they don't charge us extra for our pets), and they'll come to check it out.

After I made the call, I found myself in the bathroom, tidying. I had recently swabbed up all my hair from the floor with some cleaning solvent and a paper towel, so I didn't worry about that, but I DID spray the cucumber-scented cleaner (about which: ew) around the sink to wipe down the grime that accumulates around the faucet, like, every day, like it seeps out from the faucet setting itself or something.

Then I thought it was kind of funny, this solicitude for a maintenance person when I'm not, like, going to vaccuum or finish all the dishes or anything. It's not like the maintenance people care. Probably lots of their rentals are dirty.

But it reminded me of something that happened over Christmas break. My then-boyfriend (now husband) was still in the hospital after a weird little breakdown he'd sustained, the one that culminated with him waking me up in the middle of the night and telling me he believed he was being recruited for the CIA. He was doing much better but, like I said, was still hospitalized and we didn't know for sure when he would get out. His parents, who I'd put off for better than a week, had finally insisted that yes, they really were coming to visit right now.

Someone, I don't remember who, possibly CV himself, suggested I ask them to help with a task. Mom-in-law did my dishes, wiped the grease spots off from around the dials on the stove. (I still don't know, when mothers do this, if it's meant simply as help, or partly as rebuke, like, I can't believe you don't wipe the grease that gets on the non-cooking portions.) Pop-in-law found the new toilet seat I'd bought to replace the old one, yellowing and missing its feet. "I'll put this on for you," he said. "Okay," I said.

So I'm telling my mom about the visit, how it's going. "They're helping me out with little tasks," I said. "CVs dad just put on my new toilet seat."

There was a pause on the line, the kind where the pressure drops a little and you know the other person is responding DIFFERENTLY than you expected her to. "I hope you CLEANED the toilet first!"

Yes. My boyfriend had a psychotic breakdown and is in the hospital; we cancelled all our Christmas travelling plans; we've just gotten engaged and his parents are visiting my house, driving me around in the slow blue Cadillac, taking me out for breakfast at the Denny's. What's important here to my mom? That the toilet was well-groomed. With no extant little yellow bits. Or pieces of poop.

And, of course, it WAS. Do you think I'd leave the toilet uncleaned when company was coming?