The Queen is Visiting Syndrome

I'm not a big fan of being busy. Seriously. Although I'm the Queen of Multi-tasking, usually it's because I've let everything I need to do build up until it goes from "need to do soon" to "must do NOW" and undoubtedly there are five or six "Must do Now's" at once. That's called LIFE.

Take today, for example.

I've needed to go grocery shopping for five or six days now, but because we have plenty in the freezer for dinners, and my husband could care less if he gets peanut butter and jelly in his lunch five days in a row, and my darling daughter was going to the store one day before she picked Mr. B. up, so agreed to bring me some Diet Coke... I managed to put it off until today.

You VILL buy me treats!

Today is now, however,  the "MUST go grocery shopping" day because Joey the Killer Cat is almost out of treats, and if Joey the Killer Cat runs out of treats, we ALL pay dearly. He will either hide in the dining room and wait for you to go upstairs, when he will run up the stairs behind you and bite your leg, or he will hide on top of the stacked washer/dryer and wait for you to walk by so he can reach down and scratch your face. Yes, Joey likes his treats. I don't think all the ingredients of those treats are listed on the bag because I have frequently checked and see no "crack" or "heroine" listed, and nothing else can explain how Joey the Killer Cat acts when he has no treats.

I'm also under the gun to get my guest room straightened up. My son, who lives a million miles away from me in Texas, is coming home for a visit for a week! YAY!

But the problem comes because of something my husband loves to call "The Queen is Visiting Syndrome". I would love to know if anyone else suffers from this.

When I have company coming - and by "company" I mean anyone stepping foot into my house at any time, whether it be the service guy for the dishwasher or my neighbor for a cup of coffee or out-of-town friends and family - I have to clean my house. If you read my blog, you know my house is pretty darn clean to start with, but I'm not talking about everyday beds-are-made and laundry's-done kind of clean. I'm talking the kind of clean you'd clean if your mother-in-law was making an annual inspection visit. The bathrooms MUST sparkle! The towels MUST be straightened in the linen closet! The refrigerator MUST be well-stocked, organized and immaculate! The floors MUST gleem! Yeah, that kind of clean.

It's a curse. But it is what it is.

So today I'm off to IKEA to buy some area rugs to sew together for a new rug for under my kitchen table. Yes, I *could* go buy an area rug that would fit. But I can't find any that say "kitchen" except small area rugs at IKEA, so when I saw this photo at ApartmentTherapy.com I knew that's what I had to do. Of course, I knew this three weeks ago, and have left it until it's a MUST DO -- and it's now a MUST DO because my kitchen chairs are scratching up my new hardwood floors, and because, of course, company is coming and everything must be perfect, and apparently my kitchen can't possibly be perfect without a new area rug. The Queen is Visiting Syndrome. See?

And here's a helpful hint. Do you know instead of buying rather expensive non-slip mats to go under your area rugs, you can use acrylic-latex caulking to make your area rugs slip-proof? You can. I haven't tried it yet, but Martha Stewart says so, so it must be true. My mother used to sew rubber canning jar rings to the corners of area rugs to stop them from slipping as well. Just one of those things you file away until you need it.

Then I'm off to go grocery shopping for Joey the Killer Cat's treats and oh yeah, food for the family for the week, including a "family dinner" on Thursday and a family family brunch on Sunday morning, and having food at the ready to feed my son in between.

Then it's home to air out the guest room, take down the curtains and wash them, change the bed linens (luckily I just washed blankets and bought new pillows last week), and remove my Design Wall and all the quilty stuff that's in there waiting to magically become a quilt. I also have to clear out the Christmas gifts I'm squirreling away in the guest closet so my son will have room to hang up his clothes. Of course, he didn't do this for the first 20 years of his life, but I'm hoping he might have picked up some new and improved habits in the last 10 years.

From there it will be on to straightening the linen closet, vac'ing the upstairs, dusting and polishing every flat surface, and making sure there's no cobwebs within a 20 foot perimeter of my house.

Tomorrow I will clean and organize the refrigerator and kitchen cupboards, wash all the downstairs floors, do something cute and Fall-like on my front porch.

None of which my son will notice, but hey... if the Queen shows up at the door at the same time, she'll certainly be impressed.

Life is good - even when the Queen is on her way!