1. Race home, blow through the back door and yell at the kids for not reading my mind about what they should be doing.
2. Banish the kids to the basement.
3. Run around the house with my mom's vacuum cleaner for the wood floors and drag out my vacuum for the carpets. Comtemplate mentioning a few times during the party that I "didn't make much of an effort to clean up" and let them think that my clean house actually only took my minimal effort. Decide that this is probably not the best course for someone writes a blog about being honest and real in regards to mothering.
4. The kids come upstairs. Before they have a chance to talk, tell them I'll cancel Halloween if they don't stay out of my cleaning way. Then they mention that they are starving. Oh, its 2:00 and I haven't fed you any lunch yet?
5. Send kids back to the basement and thrown lunch from a box (mac and cheese) onto the stove. Feel a little disgusted while I finish making it, cause really, it is kind of a gross product. Hand kids their lunch in bowls at the top of the stairs, make them eat it in the basement. Go look at the leftovers in the pot and take a bite. Damn salt and fat, how do you combine in such delicious ways? Eat the res of the mac and cheese straight out of the pot, with the large wooden mixing spoon.
6. Clean food splashes off of a wall in the dining room, and one off of the ceiling. Seriously, I never had babies living in the house. How does food still get on the wall? Realize that now that section of wall looks way cleaner than the rest of it. Force myself to not get bogged down in scrubbing the dining room walls.
7. Sweep and mop kitchen and bathroom. Have a slightly psychotic internal dialogue with myself about how my friends aren't coming over to tour my spotless house and that I always do this before parties and then laugh at myself afterwards.
8. Make cornbread in a large baking pan that I should really be returning *clean* to one of the guests. Umm, I'll bring that pan back to you tomorrow Sonia. ;)
9. Whew. There, I think it's all done. I knew there was a reason I haven't let the kids take out a toy upstairs for the past two days. Why do I do this to myself? The NEXT time I'll be better prepared, I'll start sooner! I'll plan more! Or, maybe next time I'll do less! I'll embrace my house at it is! Yeah, next time...
