Cleaning Trumps Everything
Greetings All,
My friend and mentor, Dr. Joe Vitale (Mr. Fire) threw a lavish dinner party at The Cedar Grove Steakhouse in Wimberley, Texas last night. It is the story leading up to the Steak House that I wish to share this afternoon.
My wife, Suzanne is Dr. Vitale’s Publicist and Executive Assistant. She manages many of the minute details of all the moving parts of Joe’s amazing professional empire. For the most part that is a 7 day-a-week job. On Saturdays and Sundays she may not work as many hours but work she does. In fact when Joe invites us to these functions I actually get to spend more time with her one-on-one than I do at home.
Yesterday we knew this party was on the calendar and early in the morning we both talked about all the things we needed to do to be ready to leave on-time for Joe’s dinner. Yesterday of course was a Friday and the dinner was scheduled for 6pm. My wife knew this because she sent out all the invitations. Throughout the day we both clean as often as we can. She is especially good at cleaning when things start to get painful or complicated.
First, the steakhouse is in Wimberley, which on a normal day is about an hour and twenty minute drive. Secondly, the party was scheduled for 6pm which meant that Suzanne and I would be traveling during Friday-evening rush hour, which could bump the travel time to an hour and a half or more. We programmed this into our on-time schedule and chose to leave no later than 4:30pm. Suzanne also owns her own business and when she has completed her work for Joe at the end of each day she’ll stay up as long as she can keep her eyes open to work on her own business.
Yesterday was no exception. She anticipated meeting certain people at the party last night that she does business with and needed to make arrangements to get some materials to them. Before I started the cleaning practices of Ho’oponopono, I would often blame Suzanne for not being ready when it was time to go. We all know how well that will support a loved one (not).
Now though, I just accept what is in front of me and I clean and I clean and I clean (usually). At 5pm when Suzanne was still trying to wrap up her Joe-work and gather all that she needed for her “other” work and get ready for the dinner party I was “I love you I love you I love you…” When I pulled out of the driveway I looked at my watch and it was 5:07 pm. I took a new route that turned out to be a great time-saving way to get to the steakhouse. I set a personal new best-time from our home in North East Austin to the steakhouse in Wimberly, Texas. As the big hand moved on around to 12 on your standard analog clock, Suzanne’s pain in the truck became drinkable.
She revealed her shame and self-disappointment but then we cleaned and we cleaned and we cleaned all the way to the dinner party (that she sent the invitations out for). My new best driving time was one hour and three minutes to the steakhouse. That meant that we arrived at 6:10pm. We walked the short distance to the front door of the lovely restaurant and Suzanne asked where the large dinner party was already meeting. The hostess corrected Suzanne and said “The reservation isn’t til 7pm, you can wait at the bar.” We were by far the first ones to arrive.
My darling very hard working, juggles-more-than-you-can-imagine wife looked immediately relieved and we played two games of chess in the bar waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive. It was a great night.
I love you.
Bruce
