Humans are gross. That I have realized my short life so far but I realized it to a different extent when my "friend" from Washington visited me in February. She and her younger sister I had not seen for about a year but then only briefly did I know them when we met in Germany. I roomed with S (I'll just say S for the sake of saving her reputation) and noted then that she was a bit messy but even then I thought ' when you're on vacation and on the go, who cares about being really neat and tidy?' (Except for me of course) But when S and her sister came to my 3rd floor 2 bedroom apartment for the first time; let's just say after they left I felt the need to steam-igate my apartment. I washed everything that could be washed and sprayed and wiped and dusted and vacuumed - not in that exact order. I wish I could wash sofas but lint rollers and antibacterial Febreze and sunning sufficed for now.
I wish I took a picture of the scene I came home to one afternoon from work but then I'd be mean right? By some standards at least. S and her sister ran a business; a wedding guide business; and so when they are crunching ideas things are scattered everywhere and frankly I don't know how any ideas can flourish in the mess they made. Piles of stuff lined my dining table, boxes, papers and so on which are easy to neaten up and box up really but in the kitchen, bowls of half eaten food were left out on the counters spoons half sucked and left on the countertops next to them and dirty dishes sodden with food lay in the kitchen sink. I couldn't help it; I exploded and sent a barrage of texts to S asking if only they could just have left the dishes in soapy water at least. I don't mind washing dishes, it's always easy once the gunk has been rinsed off or soaked off in hot soapy water. I find it a pleasure to wash dishes dreamily rinsing them in scalding water. Just kidding about the scalding part. Although I do know someone who does that.
So really you can gather that I should have expected this from them having been privy to the experience in Germany, however the part that made me cringe lately was long after they had departed the east coast and settle back in their hometowns S announced via email the she was getting married to her fiance I met while they visited. Now that was expected and I sent my congratulations and was excited to find out all the planning details as they progressed blah, blah, blah. A few months into the planning I received an email of their first engagement photo and it was ultra gorgeous and believable. You always want believable pictures rather than the tense posing picture your great grandparents used to have where they never smiled. They made you think their marriage was a death sentence which it usually is but that's another article, on my theories anyway. So after viewing the picture I remembered that S had mentioned they would be keeping everyone abreast of the progress via her wedding guide blog so I looked it up to see what was going on. They had an interesting photo session of the wedding dress shopping experience and a nice little write up by S but once I was done reading and casually flipped through the blog for more content I discovered an earlier post in which S had a picture of her work station with a very neatly arrayed assortment of materials, practically polished without a speck of dust or a bowl of half eaten food.
I recoiled at that moment! the thoughts running through my head - was it all a mean cruel joke?! Were they just mean to me when in fact they are neat and clean in their homes? S had become a complete fraud in my eyes. I knew it wasn't true and so every bit of her business became a lie. Would you trust someone who could not organize themselves to give you advice on organizing anything?
