An embarrassed house is an unhappy house
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- February 20, 2024
- 264
Taller Half and I both love to entertain family and friends, and fortunately so does our house. Not quite as much as it once did, but company was still welcome as long as we prepared our place for visitors.
Our house wants to look her best when visitors arrive. That requires the use of the vacuum cleaner, dust and polishing rags, and sometimes a quick mop. If it’s just Taller Half and me in the house, we don’t notice a bit of dust on the furniture or lint on the rugs. We are not the neatniks we were in our younger days. Unfortunately, it really no longer bothers us if our place is a bit messy, but it sure seems to bother our house.
One evening last summer, some friends dropped by to bring us some peppers from their garden. We were happy to see both them and their peppers. We returned their gift with a few tomatoes from our garden. It was a lovely evening, so we sat on our porch and had a nice visit.
Suddenly, a wind whipped up, driving us inside, and I think our friends were a bit shocked by what they saw. Our living room was a mess. There was laundry out that I had just folded, and Taller Half had been shining shoes. There were piles of laundry everywhere, along with half a dozen pairs of shoes waiting to be polished.
We apologized to our guests for the clutter and cleared enough mess so we could all sit down and continue our visit. After they left, we were busy finishing our tasks when suddenly our lights went out, followed by the toilet in the guest bath spewing water all over the
floor and into the hall. Taller Half jumped up to deal with the plumbing problem, and I ran to call the power company to report the power outage. It seemed we were the only house on our street that lost power.
A few minutes later, our power came back on and the toilet ceased overflowing. After we cleaned that mess up, we sat down to rest and tried to figure out what just happened. Then it dawned on us: Our house was embarrassed and very unhappy with us for inviting our friends inside with no thought about what a messy state she was in. We knew we should have stayed on the porch and not exposed our house in her condition. Both Taller Half and I apologized profusely to our upset abode and promised most sincerely never to embarrass her again.
I just hope we remember that the next time unexpected guests stop by. It was rather expensive to have an electrician and a plumber come out for nothing. The moral of this story is never embarrass your house.