You know that scene at the end of every home make-over TV show, where the family is standing in the middle of their formerly-familiar house, oohing and awing over the plasma screen TV and how spacious it all feels and just a little dazed and oh, isn't awesome how you pull on the elephant's trunk and the lawn sprinklers come on?

That's how we felt when Kristen's cleaning lady, Vicky, was done with our house on Monday. We had thought we had organized by the end of the day Saturday, but compared to Vicky we had done nothing. Vicky and her daughter-in-law put away everything in the kitchen and dining room, and then cleaned every surface until it gleamed. They cleaned off the tops of the cabinets where no one every looks. They pulled all the pots and pans out of the cabinets and replaced them so that nothing falls out when you open the doors. They... rearranged all of the photos and newspaper clippings on the fridge so they were arranged in a more space-efficient manner (I do wonder if Vicky might have some OCD issues).

In all, they spent 7 hours cleaning (and organizing) our house. It was incredible. What a wonderful wedding present. I'm still nervous about setting a dish down in the kitchen -- I don't want to mar Vicky's amazing work.

Of course, I also now know how those people on the TV shows feel a few hours after the camera crews have left and you're opening all of the cabinet doors in the kitchen wondering, "now where did they put the toaster?"