# 10 Clean Floors

Remember the white socks? Here's where you can learn more about their second use.

If you ever visit a Red person's house chances are there is a mop pail full of clean water with some highly fragrant pine scented cleaner right beside the door. This serves one purpose...to clean the floor (duh! you thought it was something amazingly brilliant right?)

Picture this; You're getting ready for an important event, you've even planned your wardrobe, whether that be your best sweats or something that requires ironing, it's up to you how you define important attire. Anyway, you put on a pair of fresh clean white socks (chances are you're going to a social) and walk to the kitchen for a cup of Rez coffee when...

You step in big ole wet spot staining your perfect white sock. "%&#($*@!" Yup. We've all been there. You tear off your sock and chuck it across that floor, grab that mop sitting right there by the front door and angrily and hurriedly clean up that mess following it down the hall to the living room, where you find your kid (or man) standing in a puddle. Maybe they wet themselves or maybe they brought it on their shoes, details aren't important here. What is important is that your perfectly clean white sock is now a sopping mess that's going to require some Javex and now you have to forget the coffee and run around looking for another sock. To your dismay all you can find is a black pair, and you'll be the laughing stock at The Stock. People will be thinking about how dirty your floors must be why you have to wear black socks - seriously...that's how we judge if you're a good housekeeper or not.

With kids running around, people dropping in, men (not being sexist, just being truthful) walking across the floor with their muddy/snowy boots, and people trekking things up and down the house; our floors are bound to get messy. But all of that doesn't matter, because it is up to you to keep that floor clean. As a Red person, you will have visitors popping in and if they're Red people they WILL be wearing white socks. When they leave they will get home and look at the bottom of their feet. If their white socks are no longer white they will tell their friends about how to they had to wash their socks - twice before they got clean again...meaning your floor must never have been cleaned a day in its life!

It's true, they will talk about it. Because that's what we do, we gossip.

# 9 Visiting

Visiting is when Red people consume the most Rez coffee. If visiting was an Olympic sport it would be dominated by the Red people of the world but it would be an event in the summer games. Here's why I figure that...Historically, most Red people were semi-nomadic peoples, in the winter we broke up into our smaller family groups, but come summer we we're all together at our summer camps. That's why summer is prime time for visiting. And that's why we can visit all day, for days on end and never get sick of all our relations stopping in unannounced.

Why it works for us:
1. Our kids have someone to play with. They're out of our hair and not fighting each other all because our visitor brought their kids along.
2. You have someone who will share the load. Visitors will help you fold laundry while chit chatting, they'll appropriately discipline all the kids when they're being crazy and they'll catch you up on gossip, (or they'll make you feel important because you have all the gossip.)
3. They'll get their oldest to watch all the younger ones so you can go out for a couple hours.
4. They bring random people with them, which means you can get your nosey on! That's exciting! You get to meet people who you've either only heard about or seen at the Northern Store - and you can totally ask them all about their lives because they're in your house.

But visiting is not all fun and games, there is a certain etiquette.

Here's some guidelines:
1. Always have a pot of coffee ready to go - even if it's 40 above and the big plastic spoon on the wall is melting.
2. Have some food. At the very least have something for a sandwich like bologna and bannock. Hey! You've got a houseful of kids to feed.
3. Give the visitor's kids some sugar. Be warned, this means your kids will whine 'till you give them something sugary too. But now you have the perfect excuse to send them all outside until one of them cries.
4. Go tie up your dogs, you don't want to have to shoot one if it bites some kid.
5. Keep a mop pail full of clean water by the door just in case you hear someone getting out of their car. You can pretend you were just washing the floors....