Arrival of the Type A Neat Freak

I've been spending most of the day feeling guilty about not writing a new post today or responding to comments left on my previous nervous breakdown about my hair. But you see, in eight hours I'm going to be waiting at the American Airlines baggage claim at LAX because my sister arriving! I love my sister, talk to her pretty much every day and am SO excited she's coming! But I've been cleaning like a madwoman in preparation for her visit.

You know how drivers from car services hold up signs for their clients in the baggage claim? Well, I'm going to make a sign for my sister and it's going to say "Welcome, Type A Neat Freak". I know some people throw terms like "Type A" and "Neat Freak" around lightly, but I'm not kidding in my sister's case. She's so Type A that she was packed for her trip by this past Sunday. I mean, who does that?

She's seven years older than me and the poor girl had to share a room with me when we were kids. She'd have all her stuff completely organized and made her bed every morning without being told to do so. And there I'd be, sleeping with books and tossing my clothes on the floor. When we'd have to clean our room on Saturdays, all her clothes would get folded and hung up, arranged according to color and type. My version of cleaning the room was to throw everything in the closet or under the bed. Shh...sometimes that's still my version of cleaning my room. I chalk it up to my artistic temperament.

All of her natural neat-freakishness got taken to another level when she went to the military. I remember when she came back from being stationed in Germany she tried to teach me how to make a bed. I swear, she was getting off by demonstrating how to tuck the sheets in properly!

I love this about her because when I go visit her I sometimes entertain myself by torturing her. I am still a bratty little sister so I do stuff like set pens and pencils on her dining room table or put the newspaper on her kitchen counter. She'll whiz by and fold up the newspaper like she's on auto-pilot and stick the pens and pencils in a drawer.

The key to is to wait till she leaves the room and then get the paper, pens and pencils back out again. I'm telling you, she'll come back in and put everything away once more without even realizing she's done it before. It's like she has a voice in her head saying, "Mess! Must clean!" I love it!

So you see why I've been doing extra mopping and dusting, right? My sister gets sooo excited by cleaning. I, on the other hand, merely endure it. It's a necessary evil. I do it but I'm not psyched beyond belief to clean and never have been. Please don't think I'm a total slob because I'm not. I absolutely cannot stand a dirty bathroom or kitchen, but I'm definitely more laissez faire about other stuff. If there's a bunch of magazines on the coffee table I'm alright with that. If there's also a teacup, a couple of Lego action figures, an iPod, (peering over there to see what else) a Michael Clayton DVD, a black sharpie and a pack of stamps on the table, I'm ok with that too.

I sort of have to be ok with it all since I'm married to the messiest person on the planet and both of my children have, ahem, artistic temperaments too. I'm telling you, my husband should be the poster boy for, "Will not become neater after marriage". I've learned to live with his messiness, just like he lives with mine. We rub along quite nicely with our joint lack of neat-freak tendencies. But I know my sister usually wants to strangle him after about an hour. Ah, I'm sure they'll both play nice with each other over the next week. Besides, I fully intend to run her all over this city so that she'll have no chance to observe any dust bunnies that may crop up!

So, back to cleaning I go!