Yesterday’s story came from Jacqueline, today’s story comes from my friend Lyna.

Lyna is a family friend that has known me for a very long time- which means she saw all my awkwardness and watched me live my stupid stories in real time.

Couple that with her freakishly amazing memory, and well- you get the following story.

Here’s what Lyna had to say in response to Sunday’s post:

You could tell us all how you have evolved in your cleaning experience, you know what I mean. From “learning how to vacuum, when you were in high school.” to being a total neat freak now. Really the vacuum story is absolutely priceless, and the reason you mother bought you one as a wedding gift.

And thus begins the evolution of how I went from Cleaning Dummy to Cleaning Domestic Goddess.

My parents spoiled supported me and my sister our entire life (which is probably why I tried to pay for pizza with $3! Um- read yesterday’s story). I had wonderful parents that always took care of me.

A lot.

To include vacuuming.

Sure- I cleaned my room, I folded laundry, I boiled water- but everyone knew that my mom was the lady that cleaned the house. She was obsessed. She was a cleaning freak.

Seriously- you could literally eat off our floors.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I did on more than one occasion.

Three second rule- ha!

Sure- I tried to help out, and I definitely did my part to keep stuff clean, but my mom was fanatical about a clean house. Cleanliness is next to godliness? Yeah- that was like our family theme.

In fact- I think we put that on our Christmas cards one year…

Anyway- you get it.

“Big” cleaning jobs were off limits to such irresponsible adolescents like myself.

Like vacuuming.

One day, in high school when I was old enough not to be a freaking idiot, I decided I’d surprise my mom and do some vacuuming for her while she was out and about.

I started by vacuuming my room, finding it rather difficult to get the corners and also astonished by the weight of the vacuum!

As I finished, a little winded, my mom came in to see my surprise!

“I vacuumed for you!”

“I see! Thank you!” my mom replied.

“Man mom, that vacuuming- that’s hard work! You can get quite an arm workout! I gotta ask- how do you get the corners of the room? I found it really hard!”

“What do you mean?” my mom looked at me puzzled.

“Well- all that lifting is makes it really hard to vacuum- it doesn’t roll very easily. Not only that, but the vacuum is heavy and I could pick it up to get it into the corners without scratching the baseboard!”

“?”

My mom stared at me- deeply trying to figure out how she was able to birth someone so nice and book smart but incredibly real world stupid.

Turns out, after further discussion, I had forgotten to release the handle!

I was vacuuming with the handle upright, picking it up and trying my best to roll it that way.

Who knew vacuums had a handle release!?

Genius.

Can you believe you guys are friends with me!?

So, somehow- between wearing the wrong shoes to school, vacuuming my bedroom without releasing the handle, and today- 27 January 2009 I became obsessed with cleaning.

I’m pretty sure you guys know that. I would point you to a post in which I obsess about how much I hate people wearing shoes inside my house, however I realized it’s linked to a goofy video of me and my sister, so um- no link.

Anyway- somehow I became my mother.

Ha ha- I’m pretty sure at some point every woman says that.

I don’t know how it happened, what changed- but I’m obsessed with cleaning and truly get very agitated when my house is not the way it needs to be.

Perhaps it’s as though I feel I owe it to that poor innocent little vacuum I used-ha, or misused- so many years ago.

So there you have it. Yet another B-Love Moment.

Perhaps I will no longer ask for blogging help.

But then we’d never have this much fun!