We visited the San Francisco Zoo this week.  It is open again  (it’s about time) and the remodeling has done absolutely wonderful things for the facility.  The animals look happier, their habitats are bigger and more natural, it’s easier to see the animals, and I got in free because I went the day after Chinese New Year, and it just so happens that this is the year of the Rooster, and I was born in the year of the Rooster.

I love to visit the zoo.  It is wide open with fresh air, nifty keen plants with little tags telling me what they are, and poop flinging chimps.  When Chris was in the first six months of his Air Force training, Jonas and I went to the zoo frequently.  At the time, Jonas was a young one year old and pretty oblivious to most of the animals.  I suppose when your view of an elephant is only of the beasts knees, it isn’t very interesting.  We spent most of our time just running around or getting butted by goats in the petting zoo.  I remember once a goat butted him so hard he knocked him flat on his back in the saw dust.  Being the good mother I am, I laughed at him.  Now he is a big two and a half year old.  It was so awesome to take him to the zoo after not going for a year and seeing him see the animals and see his responses.  He pointed at the giraffes (my favs), laughed at the flamingos, and stared pensively at the gorilla for about five minutes, which, in Jonas time, is like an hour.  He had his face up against the glass and the gorilla sat there, about two feet away and looked right back at him.  I wish I could read minds so I could know what they thought of each other.  I’ve rarely seen Jonas study anything with such intensity.  The moment felt very profound, although I’m still not sure why, or what the exact word describing what I felt was.  In simple terms, it was just very cool.

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My parents are coming all the way from North Dakota for a visit. It is time to meet the new grandbaby. We had a hard time scheduling this trip. You see, I was due on January 17^th. But my due date doesn’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. I’d gone early the first time, and certainly the fact that I was on bed rest was pointing toward an early delivery this time around, but you just never know what nature has in store. I’ve heard of women who were on bed rest for months having to be induced at 42 weeks. So we had to plan carefully. This week looked perfect because it was after the due date, but not so far past it that if she came early she’d be all grown up already. We wanted to keep the ‘new’ in newborn. Amazingly, it worked! Maggie is five weeks old, still wearing her preemie clothes, but she has woken up to the world enough to be interesting and not just cute. Perfect timing.

This visit has spun me into a cleaning frenzy. Last week I cleaned out the laundry area, swept the floors, mopped, vacuumed, scrubbed toilets and the bathtub. I organized, and got rid of the pesky piles of contraband we’ve confiscated from our two year old and put in amazingly high places that we hope he can’t reach. You’d think it would be somewhat clean here but I have an extremely messy son, and we’ve all come down with a particularly nasty cold that has kind of wiped me out the past few days, so the house went to seed again.

Now we are all doing last minute clean sweeps of the various rooms, trying to promote a sense of hospitality without too much time being involved. It’s a We’re Glad You’ve Come To See Us, But Please Don’t Look To Closely kind of welcome. It’s not that we aren’t putting forth an effort, we just realize the futility.

Every improvement we have tried to make has been carefully undone by the darling grandson. I mopped the kitchen floor today. I even got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the spots you can only see, well, when you are on your hands and knees. I used up almost all of the cleaning solvent to make it really shine. Real attention to detail cleaning. As soon as the floor was dry and the mop and broom put away, and I had moved on to another room that needed my attention, Jonas got thirsty. Instead of asking me for a drink, he asserted his independence and dropped the brand new, 64oz bottle of orange juice. When I saw the mess, he handed me his sippy cup and said “Uh-oh.” Then he dropped to his hands and knees and started lapping it up like a dog. Good thing the floor was clean.

Chris is upstairs working on Jonas’ room, otherwise known as the guest room. He made the beds and put all of the stuffed animals on the top bunk all sitting up neatly, instead of tossed randomly around the room, which is how Jonas prefers things. He put all the books back up on the shelves too. Now he is standing guard over them with a broom. Jonas has been sent back downstairs quite a few times.

Tonight we will put Jonas to bed, then do a few last minute things. As soon as we get up in the morning I plan to sweep, mop and then leave the house until Wednesday morning when we pick you up at the airport. Seriously, we are going to my in-laws so Jonas can trash their house and spare ours.

Now, I do know that my parents love me unconditionally. They know me well enough to know that my perfectionism doesn’t extend to my surroundings (they saw my room as a teenager- my home as an adult is a vast improvement). They have also been the young couple with small, destructive children, so they have got to understand. I didn’t grow up in a home riddled with pristine sterility. It was comfortable and lived in, just as any real home ought to be.

So why do I want the house to look good? I am a mature, responsible adult who pays her own bills (ok, Chris pays the bills- but I made the budget!), cooks the meals (we had yogurt and Andes mints tonight), and who has given birth to not just one but two grandchildren.

Deep inside, I still want my parents to be proud of me. I want them to think I keep it together and am doing pretty well. I don’t want to be a worry to them; I want to be a credit.