Is cleanliness truly next to godliness?

Lately, I've been having an irritation; now don't all get weird on me, alongside the corner my mouth which I think came from the mic attached to the earphones that came with the Dragon program. The directions call for the mic to be an inch from the mouth touching just below and so that is what I've been recently placing it. The other thing besides having a slight irritation there by my mouth is that I seem to be having a nightly sore throat. And so I decided to do what I used to do when I worked as a credit manager before I was a mother and spray the mouth piece and the rest of it with Lysol. I used to do it due to the phones at work to make sure they were clean and illness free. Even when the boys were babies I used to freshen their room with it; I was such a cleaning fanatic that my eldest son became allergic to dust mites, the only thing he was allergic to when he was tested that when he went to school because he had none at home. Amazing, I hear you saying actually that's what the allergist told me when our eldest son was 13. The younger one, the second child when we took them camping with us, the baby sat in the dirt and ate it and to this day he has no allergies at all! It must be due to the MS or anyone of my other ills that have me more sensitive to dirt and I used to be a lot tougher gal. Now, the sore throat doesn't necessarily come from the microphone icky or what have you; it could be that I'm talking for a long time without many breaks, who knows… It's hard to be as neat and clean as I used to be at one point I used to vacuum daily, dust and wash floors scrubbed bathrooms you name it I was Mrs. Clean. It was because of the babies, the boys, if there was a piece of thread they would try and eat it if they were crawling on the floor, but that's babies and most moms try to keep them safe and healthy and that was my way of doing it. I did their laundry as often as it needed it, if that was daily it was done daily! That's just what mothers in the 70s did. When they were small I either worked part-time or stayed home and when they went to school I went back to work and then we had a business office in the house; it always seemed to work out. And of course when they became teenagers I got to work regular hours again. Yes, I did keep our home clean; in case you were wondering, but by now I was as great delegating at home as I was at work and the boys and Hubby would help with all household chores. And I would even still vacuum weekly and do laundry when necessary, but by now the boys knew how to do it too and they knew it was part of their responsibility. We also had taught them how to cook at a very young age and when we had our restaurant they love to help. Although, our younger son enjoyed working the register, by then he was 11 and at six he was already on a 12th grade math level and so we let him do it. Our elder son at 15 didn't mind helping prepare food, but we made sure they had extracurricular activities too and besides them coming by bicycle after school to the restaurant we would take turns transporting them to whatever they had going on. It was a busy life and at the time quite exhausting. We did have a couple of employees, but that proved to be a mistake with at least one of them. This fine young college graduate whose father had been in the business and owned a few steak houses said he wanted to go out on his own to make it on his own, but he forgot to tell us the part where he was an illegal drug user and his father basically disowned him. We checked out his references prior to hiring him and made him in charge when we finally got to take Sundays off. Big mistake, he robbed us blind, and he even stole the good luck $20 bill we had framed that my mother-in-law had given to us. It was devastating, and as it got more difficult with the boys needing us more and our biggest draw, neighbor, to our business moving out, a Walmart across the street moved into a larger building a mile away to become a super Walmart; now remember this was the late 1980s when this happened and so it got too quiet and we sold out our equipment etc. that we had bought all brand-new. It was hard and hubby went into his own business again, this time one that didn't need as much money to start-up, his own landscaping, which everyone always admired our properties and he did take engineering and he was in the underground sprinkler business for many years in New Jersey and so he did that. And I tried other things until I found something I enjoy. Hubby acquired quite a few customers that asked him to maintain their properties when they would go home up north to wherever and so he did. One of them was a very interesting older couple, married quite a long time and at the time this was when I was doing my race walking on the beach, in Ormond Beach to Daytona, a mile and half each way, in forty minutes and some days I would walk to their home to see if Hubby needed me to help with weeding or moving things around and then usually we would walk across the street to have some lunch. Oh yes, I forgot to mention they lived on the ocean and were quite well-off. The man was a retired professor with many patents. I would be friendly when I saw them since they were very nice to me and we would chat and enjoy visiting with them. They liked it so much that when it came the time for them to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary we were invited to their country club to celebrate with them. This was a small celebration only eight people, four couples, including their daughter and son-in-law, their grandson and his fiancée, another employee and their spouse and hubby and I. I almost passed out when I arrived there and hubby was surprised too for their grandson who we were introduced to; he was the young man that had worked for us in our restaurant and robbed us blind. Now what are the chances of something like this happening; I ask you? Well, what would you have done in those circumstances that we found ourselves…? It was a celebration we had brought them a gold-toned photo album and took many pictures there that we would deliver to them afterwards and so if anybody knew how to act and for me as you know it's difficult, but I behaved and Hubby too; neither one of us said a word. They were old and they were wonderful to us and so that's how we repaid them by not mentioning that their grandson was a thief, our same thief. For years, I always wondered how that could have happened. We knew he was from a wealthy family and has gone to prep school and an Ivy League university that's why, although, he wanted to work for us we didn't try to second-guess it, we accepted him as an asset to the business. It's been years since I thought about this, today, to check someone's background when they apply for a job you could merely just go online or contact the FBI or do whatever you want and be pretty darn sure that they are a suitable employee. Now we all know those things don't check for emotional stability in many people that may have been put through the mill when it comes to life's little curveballs and so although a person may be qualified by the references; one never really does know does one? And of course drug testing is the usual these days. Gosh, I was having this train of consciousness verbosity remembrance so sorry! Mini novel, oh that’s right a novella! To get me off the hook of this, allow me to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and ask you kindly to count all your blessings and share all your overages and we will too! And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?