The traveling salesman

So like I said in my post on Friday, we had a dinner group at our home at 6pm that night. I'd spent most of the day getting ready for it--grocery shopping, cleaning, organizing, blogging... I had my whole time table set up so that I knew exactly when to start preparing the lasagna and when to put the lasagna in the oven so it would have time to 'rest' before we served it and what time to vacuum the house so it would still look vacuumed when the guests arrived. I was feeling like that organizational, hostessing guru.

Well, around 3:30 (both kids were actually napping) the doorbell rang and there were two men standing there with an offer to clean the carpet in a room of my house absolutely free.

Me: "What's the catch? I have to buy two additional rooms?"

Them: "No, mam, we just hope you tell your neighbors about us."

Me: "Well, I'm having a dinner party here at 6pm and I don't want wet carpet..." (trying to graciously excuse them from my porch)

Them: "It only takes 30 minutes to dry."

Me (to myself) : 30 minutes, eh? I look at my watch and see I've got plenty of time before I really need to get cracking and clean carpet in the living room sure would be nice. "Ok, sure. Why not? It's free, right?"

Now normally I don't invite strangers into my home. It's a rule. But Kraig was supposed to be home at 4pm and my mom was coming to pick up Andy, so I figured I'd be safe. Plus, I trust my intuition and I didn't get ANY bad feelings about these guys. They were both puny, anyway. I totally could have kicked their butts.

So they come in and start setting up a Kirby vacuum cleaner. I know Kirby. They're thousands of dollars, but worth every penny. My parents have always used Kirby. If it didn't cost thousands of dollars, we would have bought one 18 months ago when we had to buy a new vacuum (we bought a Riccar, which is also a wonderful vacuum, but not nearly as expensive--or heavy). What? These guys are traveling Kirby salesmen? Ah, man! So what started (in my mind) as a 30 minute carpet clean turned into a 90 minutes sales pitch and THEN the 30 minutes carpet clean. And THEN they told me I could be the proud owner of this fabulous new machine (it really was fabulous) for the low low price of $2000--out the door, no questions asked, done. Right. I told them that if I had $2000 extra just laying around I wouldn't be spending it on a vacuum. They were very gracious and cleaned up their vacuum and left and didn't dump all they dirt they'd already vacuumed up back in my carpet (eww, gross!).

So with a wet living room floor and the lasagna NOT started (it was time to put it in the oven) I scramble to get everything done. Thankfully mom was there and could help in the crunch. We had a wonderful time with our guests, made some new friends, and enjoyed the evening completely, even if the lasagna wasn't out of the oven on time and the carpet was a little wet.

But, the living room really does look nice.