This week our town hosted the Utah Ballroom Dance Co. The ballroom dancers teamed up with local celebrities, practiced for a few days with them and then did a full-fledged Dancing with the Stars concert, complete with judges, videos of practices, and a giant mirror ball trophy, which our sheriff now displays proudly in his office after dancing the jive in a sailor suit. Small towns are awesome.
Anyways, we were asked to host a few of the dancers, and we're always up for hosting people who come to town for performances. When Mom mentioned it and asked if we should sign up for guys or girls, Cole said, "Ask for guys. They'll take way less time in the bathroom and maybe we'll find Jade a husband." So we ended up with four guys. I didn't find a husband, but it is true they didn't spend long in the bathroom.
We put the guys in the boys' room, which has two sets of bunk beds. It was a nice change because usually when we have company I get kicked out of my room, and then it's annoying when I want to get something out of there and people are in it. The one good thing that has come out of that is that I got a new mattress out of it once. I had been complaining for literally years that my ancient mattress was lumpy and dipped down in the middle and springs would poke out the sides and occasionally draw blood. They never listened until one night for some reason they let a guest stay in their bedroom and slept in mine instead. The next morning they didn't say, "Oh poor Jade having to sleep on that awful bed" it was "Oh my gosh, we let company sleep on that? We have to get a new one before the next time we have guests." So they bought a new bed ... and gave me the one they had been using. Still, it's much better than the one I had.
Cole was actually happy that people stayed in his room because Mom cleaned it for him while he was at school. He almost didn't recognize it when he got home because there was carpet on the floor instead of a layer of crumpled clothing and piles of torn-apart electronic devices he was scavenging parts from. When all three of the boys lived at home and my parents complained about their messy room, each of them always blamed one of the other brothers and then proclaimed with disgust that if they had their own room it would always be clean. Once people started moving in and out and each of them had their own room at some point this proved completely false. True, my own room is not perfect. But I keep the clothes on my floor in a pile next to the dresser instead of strewn across the whole floor, and they're all clean or only slightly worn. Nobody has ever walked into my room to talk to me and stepped on a pair of dirty underwear.
The rest of our house is generally fairly clean so it just took the regular cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming up the daily dose of dog hair, etc. to get it ready. Ironically if we hadn't cleaned at all it still would have probably appeared great because your average teenage/twentysomething guy isn't living in a white-glove-approved environment anyway (see above paragraph). Some of them might have actually felt more at home if we'd thrown a couple of pairs of boxer shorts on the bathroom floor.
The first night they got there, after the first of the two concerts they were doing (one was half Dancing with the Stars and half showcase and the second night was all them), we had fun talking, especially about the show and what went on backstage. Having performed numerous plays on that stage I laughed when they complained about our school's awful backstage setup (or lack thereof). I knew that the reason some of the guys didn't have their black bowties for one number was because it is extremely difficult to locate black costume pieces when you're doing quick changes in the dark, plus it's so cramped everyone else's clothes are landing on yours (one guy who was staying with us had a really hard time performing the quickstep because as soon as he rushed on stage he realized the shorts under his costume were his female partner's and not his, which is definitely a good way to severely cramp your range of motion). I also laughed when they said the stage door that lead outside kept coming open and making the side curtain go crazy until they tied it shut. Yep, done that too (sorry fire marshal).
I didn't see them the next morning because they were still asleep when I left for work, but that was fine with me because when I wake up in the mornings it's definitely not like in the movies where women pop out of bed with perfect hair and makeup each morning. I did, however, get some of the freshly baked pumpkin chocolate chip muffins my mother had prepared for them. After all, everyone knows that the whole point of having guests when you're living at home is so your mom will make extra good food.
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