I don’t know if you heard, but next week – it’s Thanksgiving. Next week. Thursday. Like five days from now. What does this mean? Well it means that I’m going to eat and drink like it’s my job on Thanksgiving day of course! Where are my cookie pants? But I realized as I was walking home from the bus stop today that it also means there are going to be people. In my house. People whose names are not Corey, Mason or Damian. Whose last name is not Fleming.

As I came to this realization, I walked through my front door. And do you know what I saw? I saw dirt. A LOT of dirt. I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing like imminent hosting responsibilities to make me look at my house in a new light. I clearly had not even glanced at my floorboards in months, because I saw a layer of dust befitting an abandoned building. Guess what else I saw. Brown grout. I looked at the poo-colored grout in my tile floor and thought, this could really warrant a call to child services. I think if my mother-in-law or my sister-in-law saw my grout they might use the “f” word. You know – “filthy.”

Since the preschool that I’m subbing at didn’t call me in today, I thought, now is the time to attack this dirt! I changed into my grubbiest clothes, put some music on the TV (does anybody even have a radio anymore?), and I broke out the green sponges that could scour the hide off a cow, got down on my hands and knees and got down to it! I am happy to report, many hours later, that my grout looks good. I have hooker knees now, but the grout – it’s good. Good non-poo-colored grout.

I still have to buy food/plan a menu/wash stuff/get booze/find my underwear – I mean, wait. Scratch that last part. This isn’t college anymore. Anyway, let’s face it – prepping for a holiday, even one as wonderful as Thanksgiving, is a boatload of work. So instead of freaking out about the 800 things I have left to do, today I am focusing on the fact that my kitchen – and my grout! – is clean.

Happy Thanksgiving-prep time, everybody!