Cleanliness Is Next To Unaffordable


The maid service came over yesterday. Beforehand, I pulled everything off counters and out of cabinets and stuck it in boxes, so I didn't have to pay them $176 an hour to do the same, and tried in general to get things squared away.

They were a little late, they didn't really get down to work right away, and they seemed to be awfully chitchatty as they worked -- not in the sense of talking to one another while they were working, but of "hmm, let's stand here for five minutes discussing what to do with this oven rack." I wasn't there most of the time, though, since I had to pick Sis up from camp during peak traffic.

Naturally, when I came home, they informed me that two hours was not going to cut it, and the entire kitchen was taken apart at that point, so I felt I had no choice, really, but to let them do a third hour to get everything squared away.

I gave them my entire last paycheck, in other words.

Sigh.

Here, the other day I was thinking what a grand healthy grownup I was, with a four-figure bank balance. Um, not any more.

I didn't know if I was expected to tip them too, but I felt so spun-out-of-control with the loss of that money (I mean, I knew intellectually what it would add up to, but seeing it written on a card and handed to me just threw me for a loop) that I couldn't bear to part with another penny. It was like being felt up on the bus by some grimy old pervert and being expected to give him a goodbye kiss, for lack of a more tactful comparison.

They did a pretty good job, especially on the bathrooms. The kitchen is nice, yes, but I felt like they concentrated on different priorities than I would. One woman spent probably an hour cleaning the oven (including waaaaay too much time on the aforementioned racks) and the drip pans, when honestly, I could have just bought new drip pans at Home Despot for far less. So it's good, but I'd rather have had slightly-less-good-but-covering-more-area. They never did the floors in any of the rest of the house, or any of the walls, for example.

Oh well. I have a heightened sense of my own worth as a housekeeper, although I could also view it as a heightened sense of the cost of being a slob. Heh.

In other news, my foot was killing me yesterday. It felt like I had a blister on the ball of my foot, and I kept wondering what I'd done to bring that on, since although I was at the gym for two hours Wednesday, I was mostly doing weights and machines and nothing too feet-intensive, plus I've been trying to be more careful about shoes anyways (regretfully, I'm parting with a few of my less-comfortable pairs; it helps that my New Boss wears the same size I do and always seems happy to get my castoffs).

Last night as I was trying to fix teh Intarweb (geez, nothing like having an amusing and/or irritating situation going on in your home and not being able to blog about it RIGHT THEN) I found myself sitting on the floor, cross-legged (and barefoot, of course, this being inside the house), and took a closer look at this alleged blister.

Did I say blister? No. Huge piece of glass -- like bigger than a grain of rice.

Um DUH. I have no idea how it got there. It was getting pretty infected, though. Yeah, gross, I know.

But yeah. I have to get back to grading papers, of course. I am SO SO SO ready for the weekend, I tell you whut, although I'm sad to see my days in Hawaii dwindling down to single digits.

We have five more days of school left, counting today. I'm trying to get everything planned out so I don't have to worry about prep so much during that last week. Our final is Wednesday, and since it's doubtful I'm going to get to show them a movie Thursday (there are so few DVD players and/or TV's that work and I have a feeling most classes are going to be trying to do the same thing), I need to come up with some other plan. I don't think I can handle grading massive amounts of work on that last day (which is why the final is Wednesday), since grades need to be in by 1:30 that day.

I'm waiting for some kind of divine inspiration on that one, I guess, or for life to decide. Maybe I could give them the final first thing, and let them have the rest of the period free, and I could be grading while they fool around?

Okay, back to work.