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My Profile
Retro-retrospection - 2008-10-06
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10:40 a.m. - 2003-05-13
Okay, this is going to sound like Bill Gates whining he had to pay full price for something. Boo fucking Hoo, right? But Consuela started work here yesterday and it's flipping me out. For those who missed the Consuela story, Mike hired Alfredo's niece to come clean house for me. She was supposed to start weeks ago, but we all got sick and life went strange and upshot is that yesterday was her first day. And I'm having all sorts of issues with it. Not the delay of work, but that there's someone in my house doing MY job. We've had help before, but it was a different gig altogether. Nature abhors a vacuum and our house is very large. So over the years we've taken in a few people and they were to provide housekeeping and childcare in exchange for a place to live. No monies were paid and it seemed only fair that our foundlings (all but one were young people thrown out by parents) pitch in and keep the house clean. I was working full time and Alex needed someone here with him. The kids got a nice safe home and food, Alex didn't come home to an empty house, and I didn't have to clean a 27 room house on top of a 60+ hour a week job. It worked, mostly. But Consuela does not live here. She is not working off her room and board. She comes here specifically to clean, afterwards I pay her and she goes home to her house. This is what's causing all the mixy uncomfortable feelings. Now I AM home. I am the homemaker. It's my JOB to be the house cleaner, right? And I'm paying someone to pick up not just my house, but my slack? Oh gravy, can we say mondo huge guilt? That we can afford it, that I am physically unable to keep up with this place, that after waiting 40 years to begin taking my writing seriously and need X many hours a day to write and Consuela frees me up to do so, these things make no nevermind to the Guilt Fairy. I am a lazy slob, a no-good-nik, and a bum. Yeah, I know, Carol Brady had a live-in maid and SHE was a housewife, but that was a TV show. In real life women who are home all day should NOT be hiring someone to come in and clean. They should do it themselves. The second thing that's weirding me out is that my house is FILTHY. Disgustingly cruddy. It's humiliating. Months of neglect. Those aren't dust kitties under the furniture, they are dust MOUNTAIN LIONS. I swear to God that the last time some of the rooms saw dust rag and vacuum was last September when I gave the place an overhaul before Mike's birthday party. And the more trafficked rooms are worse. Sticky, gloppy, and just plain old gross. I just haven't felt well enough in months and months to do much beyond keeping up with the laundry and chivvying the kids into doing what they could. Occasionally I'd have a functioning day and the ambition to clean, but it was never often enough. The bathroom would get scrubbed or the fridge turned out and then the shakes would start and I'd hang up my cleaning rag. I'm embarrassed in front of my maid. Yet, (here's where I showcase my truly neurotic side) Consuela did only an adequate job yesterday. Yeah, it's waaaaaaaaay better than it was, but some things aren't clean enough. And I am trying to find the courage to say to her, "Consuela, this floor still has crud in the corners. Do it over, please." Like don't I have the biggest brassiest ones in the world that I, the one who let this horrible mess build up in the first place, have the nerve to tell someone else that the job she did isn't good enough? Yes, I KNOW I'm paying her and as the boss I'm fully within my rights to expect good work for good money, it's just difficult for me, okay? I'm very conflicted about the whole deal. I am uncomfortable that someone else is doing my job. I am embarrassed that someone else is seeing my filth. I am freaked that I (the Uber-Liberal) have a maid. What an elitist, snobbo thing! A maid? Who do I think I am, Nancy Reagan? A recent immigrant Mexican maid, no less. How soon before I set up the sweatshop in my cellar and hire all of Consuela's sisters and cousins to do piecework for $1.50 a day and make them hold it for 12 hours because bathroom breaks should be taken on their own time? Eeeeeee! I'm Mrs. Simon Legree! The drone of the vacuum cleaner isn't anywhere loud enough to drown out the quacking from the Guilt Fairy. Sigh...~LA LA's Shamefaced Pick of the Day: "O Let My People Go"- traditional
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