Maybe it's because I'm Polish?

Or just because I'm anal....hmm. We're having some old friends come over this weekend and they have never seen our house. So, of course I am doing a major clean sweep. It doesn't matter that I just cleaned up for our company last week or that I told myself I woudln't re-do things that still looked good-yeah right. I am in overdrive. Even my everyday weekly chores (when we won't have company) are slightly outrageous. I need my house to be spotless and if it's not I apologize profusely to whomever sees it a mess. Even my mom said to me today that she doesn't know why I worry, I won't have much to do because my house is always clean! YAY!!!! I've succeeded. It's funny she should say this because she is probably the one to blame for my behavior :) We always joke about it being our old "Polish Mom"...we're 100% Polish in case you didn't know! This is a woman who wouldn't let us leave on vacation without a clean sweep of the house. After we were done packing us three kids had to be sure the floors were vacuumed, beds were made, clothes put away and dishes washed and I won't even tell you my parents' reasoning behind this! I have another purebred Polish friend and we lived together in college and I think her and I understand the best where the other is coming from. There is a book, a great piece of fiction for anyone raised in a very Polish household and it's called The Clarinet Polka. While at times it can be grotesque and brash it is also very humorous to a Polish child as myself. The first time I read it I picked one passage out the sticks in my memory today. The narrator, a young man living at home in the 60's talks about HIS Polish mother and her cleaning habits. How she insisted that the house always be clean just in case anyone dropped over. This would be fine he said but no one ever dropped by because they were all too busy at THEIR homes keeping them clean just in case anyone dropped by!! This is so true! And, as I moved furniture around to dust and polish the backside of it I realized that I had finally come to live out this personality trait that I so gleefully used to tease my mother with :) I am hoping that what everyone says is true: that when you grow older and once you have children you won't care if your house is that clean all the time anymore. Gosh I hope so.