is it just me?

After I went back to work after having a kid, I finally got my husband to agree to let me hire a housekeeper. I have never been much of a housekeeper myself. I keep my house picked up and neat, but when it comes to things like scrubbing toilets and washing floors, I leave something (everything?) to be desired. so now that I had both limited time and a constant human swiffer (my crawling daughter) I decided the moment was right to bring in professionals. I mean, it was one thing to have somewhat less than sparkling floors when the only creature that ate off of them was my dog, and let's be honest, dogs have very low standards about these things. But one thing (out of many, if I am being honest) that dogs and babies have in common is their desire to explore with their mouths. Fortunately this is something that humans grow out out. I mean, if you find something suspicious, isn't putting it in your mouth the LAST thing you will do with it? You will smell it, inspect it closely, perhaps show it to someone else, but you will really only ever put it in your mouth if you are basically positive that it is a food product, and even then you'd kind of rather not. But not babies. They put everything in their mouths, which becomes like a continual white glove test with the added adventure that you could be killing your offspring.

So, I had some people come out and give quotes, and at some point a sort of unremarkable woman came to the house and for reasons that are still a bit unclear, I hired her. Before she came to my house the first time, I cleaned it. I mean, I didn't wash stuff, but we put everything away and made sure the place was looking good. She came in, we paid her a bunch of money, and to be honest, it looked like an only slightly cleaner version of how we left it. We chalked this up to all the prep work, which we dialed back for subsequent visits. But we have now come to the conclusion that this lady is really a terrible housekeeper. She doesn't make beds, or clean under them. She doesn't really dust much. The cobwebs are left intact. She doesn't wash the shower floor. I mean, these sort of seem like basics, no? I'm not asking her to scrub anything with a toothbrush, but cleaning the dog hair off of all of the stairs (last time she got four out of seven) really doesn't seem like too much to ask, especially not for $65 every two weeks. Just three days ago I found a spot on the bathroom floor which certainly can be attributed to my dropping an entire bottle of infant's motrin in a moment of motherhood induced hysteria which included a screaming child paired with a call from my mother in law. This happened BEFORE she came the last time, which means she did not even wash the entire bathroom floor, which is saying something since my bathroom has about three square feet of floor space. Really, I am not all that demanding. But this is ridiculous, and so I must fire her. But this presents a large problem for me because I hate confrontation. A lot. I loathe this about myself, but alas have found no cure. So, like any good modern coward, I will do it via email. (More self loathing ensues.) In fact, I think I will even lie and tell her we're just not going to have a housecleaner anymore. I know. It's awful. I hate myself, but seriously, this woman is no better a housekeeper than I am, and lord knows no sane person would pay me to clean their house. In fairness to me, when she had someone call me for a reference, I was brutally honest. I said, if you really want your house clean, this is not the person for you. She is nice, and she is reliable, and she will not steal your shit, but she should not be in a job that kind of calls for attention to detail and, well, cleanliness. Because she is not all that great at either one.

no, you don't

yesterday I was eavesdropping on a conversation between my boss and his wife. This is very easy because there are some weird acoustics on my hall which result in everyone being able to hear everything which is fine except for somehow I continuously forget that this also applies to me. whoops. Anyway, he has this very funny way of greeting her on the phone. Instead of the usual "hey, it's me" between married folk he says "Hi Mary, Tom." (those aren't their names, but whatever.) I mean, he identifies himself by name, after addressing her by name. I find this very odd. Anyway, it is clear that they are discussing some medical news about someone who appears to be related to them, but I don't think it's her (hard to say). He's acting kind of distracted, but says relevant things like "oh, so it's just a cyst?" And after a fairly short conversation he says "well, I have to run. I have people waiting for me." pause. "No. I DO care." Said in the voice of someone who absolutely postively could not care less. haha. And there is nothing worse than someone telling you they care when clearly they do not, especially when that person is your husband. So, on my way out of my office I called my own husband and made him promise that we would never deteriorate to the point where we had to 1) accuse the other of not caring and 2) lie about actually doing so.