Did I walk into the right house?

In the evenings, as I round the curve on our street, I always strain my eyes to see if Ron's van is in our garage. It's difficult to tell until we get almost to the driveway, but in general if the garage door is up, then he's home and if it's still down, then I know that I'll be on my own for at least the first part of the evening, and for dinner with the girls. Abby and Hannah usually try to guess whether Daddy will be home or not, and it becomes a great source of disappointment for whichever of them guesses incorrectly.

Friday was a pleasant surprise. The garage door was up, Ron's green van was parked inside, and I immediately noticed that he had already put the garbage toter out by the curb. Given that this wasn't even our usual garbage night due to the holiday, I was impressed that he'd remembered. I'm usually the one panicking at the last minute to make sure that the garbage is out, and I'm embarrassed to say that we've missed a few pickups as well from time to time.

My next clue that something was different happened immediately when I opened the back door, into the kitchen. The spicy aroma of spaghetti sauce filled the air, and when the girls un-piled themselves from their father, I saw the spoon in his hand and realized that not only was he home for dinner - he had made dinner as well. A wonderful, hot dinner that everyone likes and will usually eat. That we could eat together as a complete family.

"There's something new in the living room!", Hannah called out to Abby. Curious, I walked to the doorway and peered into the living room. I noticed 2 things right away. First, that the cedar chest from our bedroom was back in its usual place by the front door (it had been re-located to our bedroom first by our living room re-arrangement last year and then by the Christmas tree after we put the living room back to its initial arrangement last month). Considering that the chest had been completely buried in dirty laundry (Ron's, as it was on 'his' side of the room) just that morning, I began to have an inkling that there were more surprises yet to come. This was confirmed by the second thing I saw when looking into the living room - a laundry basket overflowing with what had to be the kids' clean clothes.

Entering our bedroom, I was amazed to realize that there really is a floor on Ron' side of the bed, and that without the cedar chest against the wall, there's really quite a lot of floor there. And wait a minute - not only was the floor unburied, it also appeared to have been vacuumed as well.

I returned to the kitchen and asked the tall being who greatly resembled Ron, "who are you and what have you done with my husband?", and after a moment, I added, "and can you stay for a while?" LOL

While in the kitchen, I glanced in the sink and realized that the pile of dirty dishes that had filled it that morning was missing. Lest I worry that we'd been robbed (as if anyone would want our dirty dishes anyway), the guy who resembled Ron but clearly couldn't be my "messy, can't remember to put his own dishes in the sink much less anyone else's" hubby opened first the dishwasher (wow, I've never seen it actually completely empty before...) and then the cupboards to show me that every single dish was exactly where it belonged.

Now I was a bit scared - had he been taken over by an alien being perhaps? Or brainwashed in some fashion? I mean, it couldn't really be my husband, who I have to beg, threaten, or nag into doing the dishes, who had done all of this. And that wasn't even all of it...

Returning to our bedroom in disbelief and shock, I saw that Ron's closet door was open (a common occurrence). But when I went to close it as I generally do, I got a further shock when I glanced inside. All of his clean clothes were folded and stacked neatly on his shelves, or hanging. From actual hangers. Other things soon came to my attention as well - the carpet in the girls' bedrooms was suspiciously clean as well, and the kitchen floor was devoid of the breakfast cereal pieces that Becca had adorned it with that morning and that I had not had the time or willpower to make myself clean up for the 485th time. In the distance, I could hear the dryer merrily humming away as even more laundry was obviously in the process of being done.

The table was set, dinner served and we sat down as a family to enjoy it. And afterward, this wonderful person who had created the dinner, cleaned it up without a word of complaint.

Am I dreaming, I wondered... Is this some alternate reality that I've suddenly been transported to? For during dinnertime, it had also come out that all of the Christmas decorations (which I had taken down and packed back into their tubs - and had nagged Ron into at least carrying down the stairs into the basement, where he left them at the foot of the steps for me to squeeze back into the tiny closet under the stairs) had been put away, the ping-pong table had also been folded up and returned to its usual storage place and someone (surely not my husband!) had gone through the dozens of old videotapes that have cluttered up the computer room and had gotten rid of almost all of them (Ron collects tv shows and movies that he records on video - he's had this collection since before we met and it's taken up an inordinate amount of space in every apartment and house we've lived in). The computer room had been cleaned up and actually almost even looks like a 'real' room.

Yes, it was indeed my husband who did all of these things. On a day off from work - which he usually spends sleeping and relaxing in front of the tv, but for some reason had decided to spend, in this case, cleaning and sorting and organizing. When I recovered at last from the shock, I made sure he knew how much I appreciated his effort. And that any time he felt like repeating the feat, he was welcome to.

A mama could get used to this. Very easily, in fact. :)