The contest will officially end tomorrow morning around 8 am CST or as soon as I get back to my computer after my weekly grocery-run and the unfortunate every 3000 mile trip to get car maintenance done.

No knitting to report, last night was Book Club at my house, so I spent the afternoon running around putting things away (="depersonalizing my public rooms") - the knitting projects went away, the extra soaps and shampoos in my (only) bathroom went away. (Part of this was a lame attempt at childproofing; two of the women have young children - but they didn't bring them). Of course, everything came back out after everyone left.

I also scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom floors even though they were already clean.

I do this, because years ago, in my Ann Arbor Public Library Used Book Sale copy of Saucepans and the Single Girl*, I read that although your female friends will happily eat pizza from the cheapie Italian place down the block, and drink wine out of a box, if they see so much as a dust bunny, you will be the target of behind-the-back comments forever.

Now, I don't REALLY believe this - and frankly, my friends would be pretty shabby if they did this - but I sort of do. So I clean obsessively when I know people are coming over.

(Funny story, I've probably related this before: when I was a wee sprog, I saw my mother cleaning one day. And, being the somewhat precocious sort, I commented laconically, "Who's coming?" I do not remember that actually happening but my mother somewhat relishes in telling it. And it's sort of true: for me, I have "me clean" and "other people clean." For example - with "me clean," the bathroom floor and fixtures need to be clean, but if there are water spots on the mirror, those can stay. "Other People Clean" means that the water spots have to be wiped off.)

*Incidentally, I read somewhere that "Saucepans and the Single Girl" - which originally came out in the 60s as sort of a response to the "I Hate to Cook Book" that Peg Bracken did - is being reissued. The horror. The book, as it is, is a musty relic - oh, there are some good recipes in there (a crab casserole, some of the "date night" suppers), but the book fairly glows with the phosphorescence of a bygone era. A time when "girls" worked in a "steno pool" until marriage - at which time they cast off the shackles of their "career" (and, I suppose, put on the shackles of keeping house, cooking, and raising children, while their husband went out to work or for "boy's night out" at the local bar). I can't quite see how it'd translate into the 21st century, especially considering that the tongue-in-cheek goal was to snare a "BBD and O" man. (I presume that was an advertising agency, or an accounting firm? I do not think they exist as a corporate body any more).

The book is a fun book, but it's fun partly because it's so anachronistic - that you can read it and go, whoa, I can't believe people even JOKED about this being a good idea at one time.

But, as one of my friends tells me, there's a new generation of women who are looking for a husband, not as a life-partner and someone to fulfill them, but as someone to "take care of them" so they don't have to work. Sigh. (As the child of a stay-at-home mom? Even the child of a dad who shared in some of the household tasks? It's NOT not-having-to-work. Trust me on this.)