Perfectionist

Mother had a good heart, but she was prone to judge everything and everyone that came along. Names were a prime target. Even though Mother had given her own daughter a weird name, she felt free to critique the names other people had bestowed upon their children. Houses were also  fair game. As a devoted reader of Better Homes and Gardens, she mentally critiqued every dwelling she enetered, and, when she was home, gave the family her review. Her gavel also came down on how people dressed, fixed their hair, and lived their lives. Of course, Fiorella absorbed the perfectionist eye--and the mouth--at her mother's knee and made herself extremely unpopular in school by voicing her own judgments. Even now, in her dotage, she struggles to scrub off the vestiges. Back off, Fio. Live and let live.

Party House

Preparing for Daughter's late birthday party, Fiorella rushed around the house like a mad woman,  trying to make her house look as much as possible like her mother's house.  She failed, of course.  No one could match her mother for housekeeping.  The vacuum cleaner was Mother's weapon of choice, and Better Homes and Garden was her guide while Fio couldn't remember how to work her vacuum and hasn't read a magazine in years

But Daughter seemed happy about her party as it was so all is well in Casa Fiorella.

Dust on the Rungs of the Rocker

On ten minutes notice, Better Homes and Gardens could have made a photo spread of Mother's house. It was that clean, that well-decorated, that much under control at all times.  In contrast, Fiorella is good at decorating, haphazard at cleaning, and her house is totally out of control at all times. But she has Mother's ideal ingrained in every atom of her being, which means she goes wacko the day before anyone is coming to visit--like for a holiday--like for Easter.  Suddenly she rushes outside and despairs of dead plantings and failed landscaping.  Then she rushes inside and despairs of dirt and disorder.  The she rushes back and forth, trying to remedy eons of neglect in one day.

She'd like to tell you that she's finally realized she, unlike her mother, has worked outside the home most of her life and is now spending hr time embarking on a new career, all of which excuses her from domestic perfection.  But her brain has no mercy.  It remembers all too well the first time Mom and Dad visited  Fio and Husband in the little duplex they had rented right after they were married.  Fiorella, who was carrying a full load of college courses, had not only swept and cleaned, but come up with a clever furniture arrangement she thought Mother would commend.

But such was not to be.  Mother glanced at a comfortable chair stationed next to the TV and glowered.  "The rungs of the rocker have dust on them," she said.

And that, friends, is why Fio goes wacko whenever someone is scheduled to visit.