Tales of a First-Time Home Buyer: You're Messing Up My Vacuum Marks!
We had our first large group of people over to the house this past weekend: I had all of the fellas over for our annual fantasy football draft. This is something we all take very seriously. Everyone arrives with their own beer, snacks, notes, magazines, and about half of them brought laptops for on-the-fly research for those tough in-draft decisions.
It just so happens that the draft was scheduled for the day after my wife engineered a mass cleaning of the house. Every surface was dusted and wiped, every floor was swiffered, every dish was sparkling clean, every shower and tub was scrubbed, and every carpet floor was meticulously vacuumed to allow for a series of visible “vacuum marks.” The vacuum marks are the crown jewel of the cleaning frenzy, the cherry on top of the clean house sundae. She takes pride in vacuum marks similar to how I would take pride in a black eye or a precarious five-foot tower of empty beer cans.
I have endured the vacuum marks before. Sure, they look nice. It makes the house look very clean and orderly. But my wife takes it to another level. All of the sudden, I’m not allowed to walk to the front window to see if anyone has arrived for the draft yet… “Don’t mess up the marks over there, I just vacuumed that,” she says. “Try to walk where I do.” Walk where you do? I tell her that I don’t think she understands what’s about to happen to her precious vacuum marks; that eleven other loud, smelly, football-crazed Neanderthals wearing dirty shoes are going to trample through your oasis of criss-crossed carpet marks. They will most likely be eating snacks and spilling cheap beer while hurling foul-mouthed insults for the next four-to-six hour period, none of which she will be able to stop.
They arrived like a tsunami of testosterone fashionably 30 minutes late. The snack-eating started immediately, and a chorus of *pppssssssttt* echoed throughout our beautiful new and clean house as each member of the league cracked their first Miller or Bud Light. Insults were exchanged, arms were punched, the random draft order was set, and the mayhem began. We set up a “draft board” which I foolishly taped to one of our big, empty walls. My wife was horrified, just imagining the damage the Scotch tape would do to our wall when I took the board down. She undoubtedly cringed every time one of the fellas selected a player and trudged triumphantly over to the draft board to document their genius decision, spoiling her vacuum marks with each step.
All in all, the only thing ruined in the house was the all-important vacuum marks. The draft board didn’t damage the wall, not too many crumbs were dropped and I don’t think anyone spilled a beer. I would consider the day a success. A few stragglers stuck around after the draft to get a tour of the house, I directed them to walk only where I had been allowed to walk.
After the last one left I surveyed the scene, and was pleasantly surprised with the condition post-draft. I was just about to turn around and show the wife, but then I heard the vacuum start up, and I just got out of her way.
