The "Sister Card" and cleaning house

WE HAVE A friend and his son coming to town Saturday. We are also in the midst of tearing apart our kitchen ceiling and the upstairs bathroom.

This means a frantic week of installing a shower, drywall/insulate the bathroom and scrambling to find stuff to cover the ceiling. Someday I will tell you the story of how I was asked to suck out blown insulation, but failed to see that the bag on the wet/dry vac wasn't on properly. The kitchen was coated. Sheryl calmly took the vac away from me and proceeded to silently clean up the mess. I'm sitting down and crying again just thinking about it.

Sisters can have fun cleaning too.

Why do people clean? It's an eternal question, kind of like why I inadvertently put the toothpaste in the shower the other morning, instead of back by the sink.

I can tell Sheryl is very serious about this because she just pulled out the Sister Card. This means her sister, Stephanie, is coming over Saturday morning to "clean." Sheryl will be her cleaning slave for the morning. To me, cleaning is a vacuum and maybe a cloth to wipe off dust. To the Collins sisters, cleaning the house means they are on a mission from God and there is nothing that gets in the way.

Our house will get wiped down, swept out and every inch will get scrubbed. And I do mean every single freaking inch. I've seen the look in the Collins sister's eyes and it's manic, frantic and I can't tell if they are laughing, baying or crying while swooping down on unsuspecting dirt and filth.

I'm going to do the prudent thing and simply not be there. Hey, somebody has to man Second String Music while the house gets bleached within an inch of its life.

Sheryl and her sister will go to town and we get a clean house out of the deal, and everybody is happy.

It's a good thing. Especially since I don't have to do it.