The Maids Are Coming! The Maids Are Coming!

Note: Rarely do I write a personal post, but I want to announce what may turn out to be good news. The signs look good so far.

Ever since that miserable car accident last year—Never get rear-ended by a cabbie!—I’ve been unable to do my own housework. It’s all I can manage to get the laundry and the dishes done. We live rather primitively and have no dishwasher other than yours truly, so dishwashing here involves more than loading an appliance. Until I got laid up with this back injury, I didn’t realize just how painful standing over the kitchen sink could be.

Admittedly, the housekeeping situation here is very bad, so bad that last week The Merry Maids came to give an estimate and never called back to schedule a cleaning. I'm not surprised that I didn't get a return call because the representative contorted his face the minute he started looking around. Also, he would not commit as to exactly what day he would call back.

You ask, "Why doesn't your husband help you, AOW?" He tries to, but my husband is the Oscar Madison type; I attribute his abililty to ignore the necessity of housekeeping tasks to a combination of genetics and growing up with a live-in maid. In addition, he also has back problems, much more long-standing than mine; the same tasks which give my back fits give his back fits.

This morning, after waiting nearly a week for Merry Maids' return call, I contacted a different company, which seems to have consented to come here on Monday. Being a bit of a cynic, I’ll feel more reassured when the cleaning crew actually appears at my front door, in part because the representative did not actually come to look at the house. According to the company’s representative, the crew has four members, and I figure that within three hours, these ladies can get done what I absolutely must have done: kitchen, bathroom (Yes, only one), living room, and upstairs guestroom; they can leave my home office and the master bedroom alone, except for possibly vacuuming the carpet in the latter. The upstairs guestroom, usually closed off, simply must be freshened up because my mother-in-law will be paying us a visit in September. Even though she has Alzheimer’s and won’t remember much of anything about her accommodations here after she leaves, the daughter-in-law in me just can’t abide the thought of her staying in a room which has not been properly vacuumed and dusted.

At this time, I count the blessing of having a small, albeit quite old and a bit rundown, house with mostly hardwood floors. If the maids come as promised, four of them can put this house in order in a relatively short period of time. Come Monday evening, I hope to be a much happier person—even if my wallet takes a hit.