(A) Prepare your home for guests more thoroughly than you would for other visitors, due to a deep-seated psychological need to demonstrate to your parents (and yourself) that you are, in fact, a real adult, OR

(B) Prepare your home for guests less thoroughly than you would for other visitors, since your parents are family, and your family accepts you and your housekeeping even when you/it are not perfect, OR

(C) Never even think about it in those terms, but now wonder at just how nuerotic Rachel is that she evidently does?

My parents visited last weekend!  Yay!  We had fun.  As for household preparedness (that sounds like I'm expecting a natural disaster, doesn't it?), motivations A and B basically cancelled each other out, and I ended up preparing the house to about the same level as I would for any other guest, which is to say: as thoroughly as was possible in the time remaining after I procrastinated to the point of action-impelling anxiety.  

We went to Anacapa Island and the Getty Villa and my mother's and my favorite assortment of south coast thrift stores.  Oh, and my cousin's wedding, which was the official reason for the visit. I hosted Sunday brunch for ten assorted non-immediate family members of the groom, which gave us a chance to spend sometime together outside the wedding venue or a crowded, noisy restuarant.  

It occurs to me that this may have been the first time my parents have visited me when the express purpose of the visit was not either to help me move or help me cope with a psychological crisis or (most often) both.  (Whether this is technically the case would depend on whether one defines the emotional aftermath of marrying off my little brother as a psychological crisis.)  It's nice to have a "normal" visit for once.