undustable

When giving my Aunt Patricia a gift, you should always remember one thing: it should require no dusting. She doesn?t like objects that require dusting or actually, cleaning of any kind. There's too much cleaning to do already. And she would know, because she's always meticulously wiping out a soap dish or squeegee-ing the shower door or Windexing a decorative-flower vase or fastidiously brushing one of her four Bichon Frises (Rambo, Rocky, Hercules and Popcorn). Or worse, brushing their teeth. Or worse, having her husband, my exceedingly patient Uncle Ken do any of the above for her. And don't leave a glass unattended for more than a nanosecond either, because if you take too long between sips she'll clean that right out from under you, too.

"Oh," she'll exclaim innocently enough when after you've merely turned your head to look at something other than your barely-cooled cup of coffee, you find upon turning back that it's magically disappeared, "I thought you were finished with that."

It's inevitable that within moments of walking in her front door, before I've even put down my suitcase, that she'll helpfully inquire, "Do you need to do any laundry?" Which is to say, "Your laundry, even if clean, can't possibly be clean enough." Which is really to say, "You live in that rental house with that rental washer and you don't know what disgusting people have washed their verminous clothes in that very same machine. Don't you dare bring that bag of unlaundered infestation into my house."

Even her garbage is clean. I've thrown a tissue into the trash and actually seen it vanish in mid-air. Yes, she's THAT fast.

She's ruthless. Sentiment has no hold on her. If it's dustable it's trashable. No hard feelings, please. But her house sparkles in the sun and smells like spring and if cleanliness has any connection whatsoever to Godliness, one day she may very well unseat the Holy Ghost himself from his place at the left hand of the Father.

I'm sorry to say, I share no such affliction. My house generally tends toward the cluttered and the dusty. My laundry gets done when I run out of underwear. My clothes have not in fact, learned to fold themselves, despite all the wishing in the world on my part that they would, so most of the time they aren't. And as for my bathroom? Well, I'm convinced that while I'm out, Fred invites the neighborhood dogs over for group bathing parties. Because I can't possibly create the chaos that is my bathroom ALL BY MYSELF. It just isn't possible.

For this reason, my Aunt Patricia will never -- I repeat never -- come to visit my home. At least not until I move. She can come visit me then, but only within the first week of my residence, because during that time I can blame any filth on the previous tenants and after that I'm afraid my own dominant detritus gene will kick in and there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing. And this saddens me. But not enough to invest the time and money on the hypnotherapy and acupuncture necessary to overcome my addiction to disorganization. Instead, I'll invest the money in plane tickets to Albany, NY and have my coffee cup surgically attached to my person.