The Day I that Nothing Got Done (Unless Random Vacuuming Counts)

The past few days I've been feeling a bit under the weather. A whole bunch of weird stomach trouble and some pain and nausea, and then some more pain and blah blah blah it's really boring. I've been spending all my spare time laying around the house on whichever horizontal surface is the closest to where the kids are playing. Mostly floors....but when I'm lucky, the couch. As you might guess in all my laying around nothing has gotten done. Not a single thing....except dinner that one night. There are piles of laundry so high that at any given moment we may experience an avalanche and you may never hear from me again....not to mention the stack of dishes that await me in the sink.

This afternoon I was feeling a bit better and decided to make some headway in the massive amounts of cleaning that need to happen in order to make this house livable. As soon as the kids went down for their naps I dug in and started organizing and cleaning stuff. About 5 minutes into my cleanup the doorbell rang.....sending shivers down my spine.

I'm not sure why our house is a target for door-to-door salesmen and Jehovah's Witnesses. I try to make it look as inhospitable as possible. I've even contemplated leaving a sign outside that say's "Uninvited guests are UNWELCOME, if you proceed to ring the doorbell and wake a sleeping child I will toss one of a dozen dirty diapers at your head..." or something equally unfriendly but I'm too afraid to put off the neighbors or our actual friends by it. That said I turn people away weekly. I always feel terrible and very guilty for not buying whatever they're selling, and I've told the JW's multiple times that we're Christians, but they keep coming back. So when the doorbell rings I usually get nervous, have sweaty palms and hesitate to answer it wondering if I just pretend I'm not home if maybe they'll go away.

So this afternoon I went to answer the door, ready to face the incredibly awkward situation that inevitably follows such an excursion only to find a vacuum cleaner salesman. He went through the usual spiel to which I repeatedly shook my head no and tried to close the door. That's when it happened....

Vacuum cleaner salesman: "but Miss, if you let us do our presentation not only will we shampoo your carpet for FREE, but we'll get to go on a trip to Las Vegas! You can help us do this!"

Me: "So if i let you shampoo my carpet for free, you'll get to go to Las Vegas?"

VCS: "Yes, we have to do a certain amount of presentations for this company and then they will give us a paid trip to Las Vegas."

Me: "How many presentations do you have to do?"

VCS: " (long pause) 24."

Me: "Okay, but I promise I'm NOT GOING TO BUY THE VACUUM."

VCS: "That doesn't matter, all we have to do is the presentation, it only takes 20-30 minutes."

Me: "Okay (grudgingly opening the door)."

I let them come in gleefully imagining how the carpet would sparkle after they shampooed it for FREE not knowing i was signing away the next 2 hours of my life to watching a vacuum cleaning demonstration. That's right, TWO HOURS. By the end of it I had stopped watching and started doing the dishes and making dinner. I felt bad, REALLY I did, but my kids were starving and my kitchen was a mess and what kind of vacuum takes 2 hours to demonstrate?

One the up side of this the girl doing the demonstration was really nice. I did enjoy talking to her quite a bit and hope that she does well in college....and no it wasn't my gabbing that kept her so long, her vacuum broke. *Guffaw*

And to answer the unanswered question that's floating around in your mind from the first paragraph, no I am absolutely NOT PREGNANT....I took another test just to be sure.