What Elly sees and what she does all day.

As you know, last Sunday's strip in which Lizzie somehow or other got the whole house messy from one jelly sandwich left us wondering what was happening to make Elly think that the only sane response to a jam-covered fingerprint on a wall meant that she'd have to 'give in to the CHAOS!!!!!!!!' and find some way to not spend all day cleaning. Given that we saw obviously inhuman animal prints on the wall and more mess than a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich could possibly create, it seems almost certain that just perhaps, the mess we see is not the mess that actually exists.

As I said long ago, it might be that the same odd phenomenon that makes Elly look in the mirror and see an obese lump with a sagging, lined face instead of the reasonably attractive and fit woman she actually is makes her look at a reasonably tidy little home and make it look as if the Vandals stopped by for some recreational pillaging: the need to focus and obsess over one tiny little thing and make it look like a great big thing. She sees herself as being swamped by hard work; a passer-by would see a crazy woman scrubbing away at one spot for hours on end while letting real problems pass her by.