Horrendous Housework Has Hurt Harmony

A strange new experience for me is the house-sitter.

You go away for a wee while and someone moves into your house and uses all your stuff should be the premise for a creepy movie, not the actual plan

Still, Trouble needs someone to sleep on, and our friends, Amandrew, need a transition place. So it just seems like a good idea.

Until all the details become obvious. Like where are they going to park, how do we fit 4 people's clothes into a 1.5 bedroom house, how can they live with our idiosyncratic entertainment setup?
Most importantly, why is the place suddenly messy? It was fine just a minute ago but now that we have a house-sitter EVERYTHING needs washed, sanded, repainted, and replaced, probably twice!

...

So we spent large parts of today cleaning and packing and re-arranging innocent piles of stuff frantically. The "office" has never looked so good and the plants are gleaming. Having someone over is both terrifying and productive.

Thus our housework was both gratifying and grumpy. Which is annoying but still we scowled and muttered through without any big problems. It helps that Gael is so cuddly :)

If you're getting a house-sitter, my advice is get a teenager with his own x-box: you won't need to tidy at all.