...having your wonderful, warm older neighbors announce they'll stop by in a few minutes, to show off some of their artwork...knowing that your house is a MESS.

And so you grab all the piles of receipts from the livingroom floor (you'd been doing taxes), and throw them in your bedroom--no longer in tidy piles. And you fluff up the down cushion on the loveseat...shut the bedroom door (ignoring the fact that your bed is unmade), and try to gather up the pile of fabric (see last journal!) and a corset from the livingroom floor--and hear the door knocker.

You leave the fabric, just sort of shoving it together. And remember that you forgot to buy toilet paper that morning, and only have Kleenex. (It's unlikely this will be an issue, since they live down the hall from you...but you never know!) And think, with dismay, that you haven't yet vacuumed up the dead petals from the last flower arrangement you had in your studio--and they MIGHT go in there...and you notice, as you head for the door, that there's a big ugly gap under the dishwasher, because you have a clogged dishwasher drain, and had read an article that led you to think you could fix it yourself, by removing the bottom panel...

And naturally, the lovely older woman--who is warmth and elegance combined, is telling her husband that he really MUST see what I've done with the place--and he MUST look at my studio (I try to stand in front of the petals...but I don't think it made much difference)...and you're conscious the whole time of how *beautiful* THEIR home is, and you wish you could just relax and enjoy their visit (and the really lovely photos that you're being shown--that were hand-printed on artist's paper--and taken with a 7x17 view camera that your neighbor's husband had gotten just a couple of weeks ago)--but mostly, you want to curl up and DIE, because you're a BAD person, who DIDN'T CLEAN HER HOUSE THIS WEEKEND!!!!!!!

*sigh...* How come they never stop by when my house is freshly cleaned, the scented candles are burning, and I have fresh flowers out? Huh? Why is that???!! (And why do I care, when I know *I* wouldn't care, if THEIR house was messy...and that they are both WAY too kind and generous, to ever think anything but the best of anyone?!)

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Footnotes:
One of my favorite entries, in my all-time favorite blog - Creating Passionate Users. Prepare to be challenged by it!