The energizer granny

Momma Waste is here for a visit. When we discovered that Frontier Airlines was a having a $100 round-trip special from St. Louis to Denver, Mr. Waste and I decided to treat my mother to a trip to Denver for her birthday.

Now some people dread visits from their relatives, especially their moms. Not us. Our house has never been cleaner. You see, when Momma Waste comes for a visit, she cannot sit still. Even at the age of 73, she still runs around like a mad woman organizing drawers, rearranging so much in our house it takes me weeks to find them again.

So far she has:

• Cleaned out both our refrigerator AND our freezer. All our mold experiments are gone.

• Dusted every leaf on every plant in the house – and it’s a terrarium in here. The Denver Botanic Gardens have nothing on us.

• Cleaned every single blind on every window in our two-story house. Then she cleaned the floors to pick up the dust that fell off all those blinds.

Now, we do tell her to just sit back and relax while she is here. “Enjoy some time with your granddogs.” “Kick back and watch some movies on Netflix.” But she insists she needs to get her chores done, even if they are OUR chores. Well, you just can’t fight momma. So instead, I just line up chores for her to do each day. It’s the least I can do, right?

And to be fair, we are taking her out to dinner, a symphony concert and some movies while she is here. She is being rewarded for her chore work.

Momma Waste just retired a few months ago from her job. Yes, even at 72 years old she has been cashiering at the cafeteria in our local hospital. Before that she was a waitress at the nearby river casino. People always ask me where I get all my energy. Now I know.

I tried to get her to relax by playing some games on my iPad. “Boy, you can really waste a lot of time doing this,” was her reply. When you come from a family of 16 kids living on a farm in Canada, there was always something to do. Cows to milk, chickens to feed, dirty hands to wipe up. You just didn’t have time to sit around and play games.

Besides being the incarnation of the Energizer bunny, Momma Waste has also become a rabid texter. My niece got my mom a cell phone and taught her to text, and she has not put down the keypad since. For someone who has never owned or used a computer, it’s quite a shock to get a text from my mom. She has become a texting fiend. The grandkids love it.

Momma Waste heads back home in a few days. Our clean house will be sad to see her go. And so will we.