Kitchen Queen

I’m embarrassed to admit that my 84-year-old grandma is cleaning my kitchen right now. And I don’t mean she’s just doing some dishes.
 
She deemed my kitchen so dirty that she allotted a whole week of her month to come up here to Grand Junction and clean it.
 
It’s a good thing I cleaned the carpets a few weeks ago or she really would have been horrified.
 
Yesterday she marched me into KMart — or rather Big K — and made me buy all the best cleaning products like AJAX and Formula 409.
 
She got up at 7:30 a.m. to start this nasty chore. I didn’t even have to time to curl up for my five minutes of “me and Al Roker and a nice cup of coffee” time before she started banging and spraying and scrubbing.
 
Lord ... she must think I’m a total slob and in a lot of ways she’s totally right. Her idea of clean is my ideal of clean which I never reach. I can put on a good illusion but she sees right through it.
 
I’m embarrassed and at the same time grateful that someone came to rescue me from never ending housework. No matter how hard I try there is some kind of down and dirty housecleaning that I can’t ever seem to find the time to do but it still needs done.
 
Why? Oh yeah, because usually I’m changing diapers and cooking and shopping and paying bills and working at The Daily Sentinel.
 
By the end of the week my kitchen is going to be so clean that you could have your appendix removed right on my kitchen counter.
 
I think I’ll just stop using the stove so that it just stays immaculate because it’s pretty unlikely that it will ever be this clean again.
 
Last night she was telling me about how the doctor used to tell her to give her babies canned evaporated milk. You know, that kind you make pumpkin pie with. And one of them got really sick ... uh, yeah ... but maybe I should be giving Jonas some of that because he’s crying too much.
 
Wow, it sure is different the way children are raised compared to the ’50s. It’s a wonder any of baby boomers lived. Evaporated milk!!!

 
Anyways ... I guess I’d better watch and learn how to deep down clean. Besides the oven cleaner has been sitting for EXACTLY TWO HOURS she’s informed me and it’s time to wash it off. I just can’t in good conscience let her do it all by herself.
 
But, “thank God for grandmothers” is all I have to say.