Today I spent the afternoon cleaning my living and dining rooms.  It was one of those very productive but invisible cleans: everything I’d shoved under the couch or in a cupboard got pulled out, sorted, cleaned, discarded if necessary, and reorganized for replacement in its proper home.  So even though I did housework for four hours, it looks about the same.  Only I know the true depth of my accomplishment.  Which isn’t really enough, so when Husband got home from work I paraded him around the apartment showing him where all the mess used to be.  (Which I realize now is mostly just me confessing to my bad housekeeping habits… hmm…)

You see, my landlord is coming next Wednesday to oversee the planning of the replacement of our patio planters.  I have this crazy idea that if the apartment is totally immaculate when he gets here, he will instantly see what a terrible mistake it was to say “no” to our requests for pets, and in a spasm of overwhelming guilt and remorse, he wil spontaneously offer to let us get a baker’s dozen of cats.  Of coure, what will really happen is he’ll say nothing and all this effort will be for naught… but anyway, I guess I do get to live in the nice clean apartment after it’s all done so what the hell.