Saturday, May 28, 2011

Hospitality

What keeps me from hospitality?
Melanie's post has prompted some pretty strong feelings.
I do remember the cleanliness of my both of my grandmother's homes. I remember the cleanliness of my aunt's house....I remember my sister tracking dirt from her sneakers onto my aunt's newly mopped floor.  I remember helping my aunt vacum when I stayed with her one summer and helping my step-mother clean when I stayed with her. So I am all to aware that there are some people who do place value in a clean house. 
We have two/three cats and two dogs.  I say it that way because one cat was here when we moved in and she comes and goes as she pleases but still contributes to the dirt and hair.  Turns out that some of the people that I would love to invite over are allergic to cats...even though I did a VeRy thorough cleaning a whole week leading up to one of them coming over they still were miserable.  When I hear of women and men who are cleaning machines it cements the idea even more into my head that these people would not be comfortable in my home and it would be a miserable experiance for us both.  Just this week I heard that from a friend I had coffee with and promptly checked them off the list of people that would be good to have over.  There are people that have mentioned that they would like to come over and I have given them an open invitation to stop by any time they want with no warning but they won't take me up on it.  A friend did stop by out of the blue last week but that is only the second time that has happened in the 6 years we have lived here.  I have no problem whatsoever with dropins...in means they don't care what state the house is in.  When we were in Tallahasse and then Palm Bay, we used to call out "Man your battlestations" when someone called to say they were around the corner and then we would wipe down the bathroom sink, clean off chairs/tables and make it less messy.
And you know, even though Melanie says she hasn't dusted in two weeks, I've been to her house, it is still tidy...you know why I know this...because I used to just drop in on her.  I miss that.  In 6 years I've had no one to just drop in on.  My life in Palm Bay was not free from struggle but there are some things I miss about it and one of those things was giving and recieving hospitality.
 
Since I sent the camera with Josh and the kids this morning when they left to visit his family for the weekend(I have to work tonight and teach SS tomorrow)I couldn't take pictures of what you'd see if you dropped in right now.  I pulled the Welcome image from here.  Oddly enough, she too was talking about hospitality.  Evidently she says you have to plan for it. Or maybe I'm don't have  " purposeful selflessness."  So there we have it, I guess I'm just a grump now that we've moved to Jacksonville and if I would just change then the masses would flock.  Who knows, I wish I could turn the tone of this post into something light hearted and wonderful but I really feel it going down the drain...it's like watching a train wreck....Quick turn your head, avert disaster, run from my blog now before you're brought down!  Now I'm feeling all Lemony Snicket.  I love it when a Chidren's Book comes into reference...

2 comments:

SenoraSabrosita said...

A few weeks back we were entertaining friends from Atlanta who came by for a weekend visit. They know our mess, so I wasn't really worried about them. But we were having a new set of friends over for dinner who had never been to our house. So I was trying to pick up the house before they came. Here are the things that I forgot to clean up. The wet dog towel hanging on the front porch. The box of dog poop and pooper scopper sitting at the bottom of the front steps. I wonder what their first impressions of us were! LOL

thurmanmom said...

The best way is to just start. When we first got married, we would invite a few people over after church on Sunday night for rootbeer floats if ice cream had been on sale that week. We never invited anyone ahead of time. It was always a wait and see who is at church kind of thing. Many times no one took us up on our offer, but there were some who did. After accepting a few times, some of them became drop in friends. Some came once and never returned. It was a start. It takes a lot of invitations to finally get a good buddy like you, but it is certainly worth the effort.