Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 031

So anyway, with Mom cooking, we end up eating our usual brown rice and vegetables, or tofu salad or something. After dinner, Mom wanders off to watch TV unless she and Richard are going out. Richard waits until he can't stand it any longer. Then he makes Mary Anne and me help him clean up the kitchen.

This really is not fair. Not that Mary Anne and I have to help him, but that he has to clean up the kitchen again (because, of course, he cleaned it up after breakfast).

The problem here is not that Mom would never clean up the kitchen, but that she might not get to it until the next day. She's just loose about those things and Richard is rigid about them.

I can't imagine why I didn't see these problems before they got married.

One Saturday - the Saturday after the Pike Plague had started - our usual day began. I dragged my eyes open at nine o'clock. Mary Anne's bed was empty. (One part of it was full of cat fur. Tigger sleeps with her every night in the same spot, and he sheds.) I lay in my bed and enjoyed the peace and quiet. I could tell that the weather Was nice because I could see sunshine peeking around the window shades. The day stretched ahead of me. I didn't have a thing to do. I mean - nothing I'd planned to do. My homework was finished and I didn't have a baby-sitting job. I rolled out of bed, took my time in the bathroom, and then padded barefoot into the kitchen.

There were Mary Anne and her dad seated at the table, eating breakfast. In a corner by the refrigerator, Tigger was eating his breakfast. (It smelled awful.) "Morning," I said, feeling like a stranger in my own kitchen, even though both Richard and Mary Anne smiled at me, and Richard served me breakfast right away.

"Guess what we've decided today is going to be," said Richard, smiling.

Uh-oh. What?

"What?" I asked.

"Spring-cleaning day!" announced Mary Anne.

I just looked at them. Finally I said, "In my whole life, I have never spring cleaned." "Well, there's no time like the present to start," said Richard. He is always coming out with sayings like that.

Wait'11 Mom hears about this, I thought, but all I said was, "I think Mom wanted to go to Washington Mall today." "Oh, well. She can go tomorrow," said Richard. "The stores are open on Sunday." I almost said that there was no time like the present, but I didn't.

When Mom finally came downstairs, Richard kissed her gently (I like it when they look so much in love, even though it's embarrassing), and then he said (what else?), "I'd just about given up on you. I hope your breakfast still tastes okay." I don't now whether it did or not, but Mom ate everything except the bacon. She never eats it and Richard always serves it to her.

Then Richard broke the news to Mom about spring cleaning. She took it well, since she is so laid-back.

The cleaning began. I could tell that Mom's mind was a million miles away. She just sort of drifted through the house with a dust rag, wiping stuff from tables onto the floor.

Mary Anne followed her around with the Dustbuster.

"That is so rude," I told her.

"Well, your mother isn't cleaning. She's just moving the mess to the floor. She's brushed flower petals, cat fur, and kitty litter onto the floor and left it there." "She doesn't realize what she's doing," I replied. "And furthermore, the cat fur and kitty litter wouldn't be there if Tigger weren't." "No, the kitty litter wouldn't be there if Dad and I weren't. Tigger went to the bathroom outside at our old house. But he's afraid to go outside here. So he uses the litter box." "Hmphh." Just to get back at Mary Anne, I tiptoed upstairs to our parents' bedroom. I opened the sock drawer in Richard's bureau. There were neatly matched rows of socks - in alphabetical order by color. I switched a pair of brown socks with a pair of gray ones.

I knew it would drive Richard crazy.

Then I glanced around the bedroom. It looked like it was being shared by Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, the Odd Couple. So I straightened up Mom's messy half of the room. On Richard's neat half, I "accidentally" dropped a tissue.

By six o'clock that night, the house was spic-and-span. The tissue was even gone from the bedroom floor. However, Richard had discovered that his socks were out of order. It had driven him crazy because he thought it was his fault. So as you can imagine, what with Mary Anne and the Dustbuster and Richard and his socks, no one was in a very good mood, despite the clean house.

Except for Mom. Ever cheerful, she said, "Let's order in Chinese food. Then those of you who want meat can have it, and the rest of us can eat vegetarian." So that was .exactly what we did. And we actually had a nice dinner. We ate on trays in front of the TV. We even agreed on a movie to watch on the VCR. The trouble arose when we had finished eating. Mom wanted to watch the rest of the movie and then clean up. (I think Mary Anne did, too.) But Richard wanted to stop the movie, clean up, and then watch the rest of the movie. Personally, I thought that was a good idea, because it's best to get leftover food in the fridge as soon as possible, but I felt I had to stick up for Mom.

"The dishes can wait, can't they?" I asked.

After a pause, Mary Anne said, "I think we should clean up." "Then clean up," I snapped.

(Mom was oblivious to this. She was engrossed in the movie.) So Richard and Mary Anne cleaned up the kitchen while Mom and I watched TV. About a half an hour later, Mary Anne stuck her head in the room and announced, "I'm going over to Kristy's. Thanks for a lovely day, Dawn. You won't have to see me again until tomorrow because I'm spending the ni - " She was interrupted by a gagging sound. It even attracted Mom's attention.

Tigger was throwing up on our Oriental rug.

"Oh, no!" cried Mary Anne. She rushed Tigger into the kitchen in case he got sick again. Then she returned with some paper towels to clean up the mess. She found my mother in a pretty bad mood.

"took what your cat did!" Even I hadn't expected Mom the slob to say that. She'd never cared about our rugs before.

Mary Anne was so nervous about Tigger and my mother that she stayed home after all. I couldn't blame her.

What a day, what a day.

Chapter 8.

Almost a week later - on Friday night - Mary Anne and I were still arguing about everything, and Mallory and the triplets were still sick. The doctor had said that Mal had a worse case of the pox than before since she was older. And the triplets were just plain in bad shape.

Anyway, we were holding yet another meeting without Mallory, and scrambling around, trying to fill all the job offers that came in. We'd had to call on both Logan and Shannon for help. As the meeting came to a close and the phone stopped ringing, Stacey said, "So what's everyone wearing tonight?" "For what?" I asked.

"For the dance," said Mary Anne.

Oh, yeah. I'd forgotten about it. Everyone in the club, except for Jessi and me, was going. Jessi wasn't going because the dance was only for eighth-graders, and I wasn't going because I hadn't been invited.

"I'm wearing my pink dress," said Claudia. "The short one. And my earrings that look like globes. Oh, and a necklace I made from candy." "You had candy in your room and you didn't eat it?" I said.

Everyone laughed. And Claud's clock turned to six.

Good. Time to go. We could get off the subject of the dance. I hated the fact that no boy had asked me to go. (But I had to admit that I was looking forward to an evening at home without Mary Anne.) That night, as soon as dinner was over, Mary Anne ran upstairs. "Help me find something to wear!" she called over her shoulder.

Oh, yuck. That was like rubbing salt in a wound. I felt bad enough that I hadn't been invited to the dance. But if helping Mary Anne would speed things along and get her out of the house faster, then I would do it.