Now That School Has Started

     My friend, Valerie, an elementary school music teacher, was explaining to me Sunday that she was getting behind on things at home "...now that school has started." The funny thing was that this was the second time I had heard the same phrase within an hour from another school teacher.
     I think I'm going to steal it! My yard is a terrible mess, weeds everywhere, veggies and flowers dead due to the heat and needing to be pulled up but I just don't have time to get out there and work in it "Now That School Has Started". And, oh, my gosh, I intended to get the linen closet cleaned out. I know we have more than two towels to our names but heaven help me if I can find them in there. 
     And my desk was my first priority. Jimmy Hoffa may be buried in there, you'd never know. I can't imagine when I am going to get to either of them "Now That School Has Started."
     Here I've gone all these years without a good excuse for the mess around this place. Oh, I know enough to leave the vacuum cleaner sitting out so that if someone comes to the door unexpectedly it looks like they have caught me in mid-cleaning instead of "Oh, my word! Are they about to condemn this place?" And if I have any warning someone is coming I just spray a little Pledge behind my ears and stick a dust cloth in my back pocket. They can draw their own conclusions.     
     I had a friend when my boys were little who, twice a day---I am not making this up!---went around and wet-dusted her furniture. She said it was because her kids had allergies but I think they had never had time to build up a resistance to dirt because she was always so clean. Yeah, I don't dust because I am thinking of the kids.That's it. Besides, dust is a protective finish for furniture. Two birds with one stone.
     Since I didn't know about "Now That School Has Started" back then I had to be a little creative. When we  moved into a new house I picked the color of Oklahoma red dirt for the carpet. (It was the seventies! What can I say?) You could look through the living room, out the window and to a little bare hill of dirt behind our yard and the color never changed. The front hall tile that was already there when we moved in was a mottled, really ugly mix of rust and off (way off) white that was such a busy pattern that---I'm not making this up---I don't think I mopped it five times in all the years we lived there. Nothing showed.
     I had gotten the idea to leave that tile there from the rental house we had moved from. It had kitchen carpet (too gross, even for me) that was rust and brown and some other color unknown to man and---you won't believe this, but it happened---when my friend Fran used to cut my red hair in that kitchen we actually lost the hair on the carpet and couldn't see where to sweep it up. Ask Fran, she's on Facebook!
     These days my kids are grown, we've moved from that house and I'm not even a school teacher, but I still can find better things to do than housework until it is forced upon me. (Oh, please! Like you don't do the very same thing.) Here I sit at the computer instead of doing the dishes. I can't do everything, you know. Not... Now That School Has Started.