Gladys

I am exhausted. I have spent all day cleaning this house. Helmut comes home tomorrow and he has pretty high clean house standards. Part of me has resented scurrying around the house all day to clean up for a man. The other part of me realized I couldn’t really move without giving the house a good deep cleaning, so I am killing two birds with one stone. The part of house cleaning I hate is what I call the “iceberg factor.” You get started and realized you could only see 35% of the dirt and the other 65% was lurking down below. As a result, it always takes longer than you thought it would. The upstairs is done and I am hoping to tackle the downstairs this evening and tomorrow.

I got a call from Little Helmut at school today. He had tried me on my cell (because my landline is still not working…going on day four), but couldn’t get a hold of me. He called Sarah and Big Daddy in an effort to reach me. Of course I was thinking the worst. The first thing he said was, “I am not in trouble. I am not in trouble.” He had gotten a 100 on his Science Unit test and won the privilege of bringing home the class pet for the weekend. He needed a ride home from school, because of course you can’t bring the class pet home on the bus. Meet Gladys, the class rat.


I am hoping the weekend of pet sitting goes off without a hitch. When I was in elementary school my brother Matt got a turn bringing home the class gerbil. Somehow the gerbil got loose and we spent a good portion of the afternoon looking for it. Sadly, we found it by way of the deadly-to-gerbils rocking chair. I don’t remember any blood and guts, but I remember a dead gerbil. I will have to ask Matt how that Monday at school went for him.