Kurt likes to tell everyone that I’m a total clean freak, and admittedly, I am. I actually like to clean and I’m a little OCD about it too. Usually the OCD part is only shortly after cleaning and goes as far as picking up the lone pine needle on the floor, or the hair (usually mine) or spec of dirt in a sink. That OCD aspect ends right after Sophia comes in from playing in the mud and walks across the entire house before taking her shoes off or Kurt goes to shave and leaves what looks like the quills of a half dozen hedgehogs around the sink. That pretty much cures the OCD and I’m back to my defeated maid mode. I calm myself by saying, “I’ll clean it all next week. It’ll be spotless!” And then it all repeats itself…again.

Two things bug me about Kurt going on about my obsession with keeping the house clean. The first is that people wrongly assume that I judge their cleaning prowess. I don’t. I could care less how someone else keeps his or her home. I worked as a maid for six months, which is about five months longer than most people last. I’ve seen it all. I also worked for a psycho woman whose home made all others look utterly spotless. Unless animals are running around crapping in the house and no one bothers to pick it up, ever. I’m fine.

It’s also assumed that because I like to clean that I’m a germaphobe. I’m not. My hatred of water aside, germs don’t bother me. I’ll share eating utensils with friends, and drink from the same cup. I even ate food prepared by psycho woman in her home.

The second thing is that Kurt make it seem as if it’s all me.  It isn’t.  He is just as obsessed as I am, but I allow messes to be made. I try to keep all food and art messes contained within the borders of the dining table. Sometimes they escape, but usually I’m pretty good at collecting the art supplies before they wonder off with the preschooler. Either way, I allow messes to happen.

Last week I found finger paints in a tube at the store and bought some. How awesome is that? I can just squeeze out the allowable about of color mess onto a plate and let the mess creation begin. I told Kurt about my find as I pulled it out of the art drawer to dole out to the preschooler and his first question was, “is it water soluble?” He was almost frantic about the question as I’m squeezing blue paint onto a paper plate. No dear it’s oil based finger-paint. It’s an evil plot concocted by Crayola and Bob Ross to get every child to look like a Smurf and paint Happy Little Trees all over the damn house. Yeah, but I’m the neat freak. Right.

I bought Crayola’s Color Wonder paints once before. It’s a clear paint that only shows color on special paper. Kurt was also leery of that. I didn’t buy it again because each color came in a small container meant for the kid to put her finger in and paint on the paper. I don’t know if other kids are disciplined enough to paint a picture and then stop, but my child just glopped paint on one piece of paper in one sitting until all the paint was gone. That was about seven dollars for an hour of painting joy. I bought Color Wonder markers after that just to use up the rest of the paper. She doesn’t like the markers as much.

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