Muffins with Mom – Meet the Parents



Cleaning house for a special event.

Have you ever experienced that awkward time when you anticipated meeting the parents of someone you were dating? It happened to me, with a different spin on the situation. I was planning to meet the parents of a girl my son was dating and wanted things to go just right.

The parent meet up was scheduled to take place at my house on a Friday evening. When I agreed to this meeting, I told my son he had to help clean the house. Our deep cleaning is usually put off reserved for the weekend.

Just when panic and stress was about to set in, I came across a housekeeping tip on Facebook that helped put me at ease. The tip said, “Always keep several get well cards on the mantel. That way, if unexpected guests arrive, they’ll think you’ve been sick and unable to clean.” We don’t have a mantel, but we could place the cards on the big backed T.V. that we still have in the living room.

Our Plan B was to keep the lights off and just let the sunset illuminate the living room and perhaps conceal the clutter. I held out hope that we have everything clean the day before our big meeting. It didn’t happen. My son procrastinated and I didn’t want to do everything for him.

On the day of our Meet the Parents gathering, my son stayed after school for football workouts and I stayed after work. This didn’t help our situation. By the time we arrived home at 5:30pm, my son’s friend texted him and said they would be on their way to our house at 6pm. Then my son told me they only lived 10 minutes away.

We dropped our bags at the door and began racing around the house. I tackled the living room while my son worked in a different room. I found a TV remote control and a curtain tie back between the couch cushions. I’m sure that was the last place my son sat. There were also a couple of backpacks that lay dormant near a couch, that needed to be relocated.  After 30 minutes, we were ready for our guests.

The doorbell rang and my son came into my room to tell me our guests had arrived. When I got to the door, I was surprised to see his friend with only her dad. I looked around for her mom. I thought this was an entire family meeting.

I greeted my son’s friend and her dad in our slightly illuminated, clean, living room. We made introductions, shook hands and then he was gone. After he was out the door, I told my son’s friend, “I’m gonna need your dad to come back and sit a few minutes longer. We just cleaned our house.”

We all enjoyed a laugh then went our separate ways throughout the clean house. Our Meet the Parents night didn’t go as I thought it would, but it was just right.

Have you ever had a Meet the Parents episode?