Cleaners

I always feel some guilt when the cleaners come. For starters, it costs a lot for me to pay other people to do what I could very easily be doing. I hate doing it, but I am certainly capable. At the same time, while it seems an expensive luxury, I know that it is really not a very good wage for the cleaners. Lazy and exploitive, that's me.

The other day, I looked completely ridiculous mincing around the house in my tennis skirt all sweaty and gross (can't shower after my lesson if they are scrubbing the shower, now can I?) while two other women made said house presentable. Am I really this person? Murphy's Law helped me out, keeping me from being totally spoiled and indolent.

Almost as soon as the cleaners left, W. took and ate popcorn in the basement, scattering it far and wide. Then someone who will remain nameless had a massive accident in two bathrooms (!) because smearing the toilet seat in just one would be underachieving. Next T. got out a bottle of carbonated, flavored water, spilling it across the newly wiped counter tops, down the cupboard fronts and splashing it all over the floor and refrigerator before dumping it down the heating vent. Finally, R. decided to eat the last remnants of cereal out of a box by upending it into her mouth instead of a bowl, sprinkling Golden Grahams crumbs all over the portion of the kitchen floor not yet covered by effervescing water.

In short, I paid to have my house cleaned spotlessly and was left with white popcorn flecked carpet, half a kitchen awash in sticky water (how bad is it that it glooped down the vent too?), the other half crunching with crumbs underfoot, and two bathrooms fit only as Superfund sites. Money well spent, wouldn't you say? I got to stimulate the economy and do all the cleaning I love so very much. Ain't life grand?