You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Around the middle of the 7^th week, David announced he was getting me a cleaning person. If you’re close to me, then you’re aware of my lack of enthusiasm for cleaning people. I’m not one of those people who cleans before the cleaning person comes, so more often than not, they walk in and tell me I don’t do a good enough job caring for my floors or cleaning my stove-top. Hello? I didn’t clean them because I KNEW I WAS PAYING YOU TO COME CLEAN THEM! Why would I hire someone to clean if I’m just going to do it myself?!

Being that I was feeling fairly emotionally unstable, I immediately took this as a personal affront to my cleaning abilities and cried. So, later that day, David decided to explain it differently. “I want to hire someone so that you don’t have to do the cleaning. You’re doing enough everyday just growing our baby. I don’t expect you to CLEAN, too!” He’s very good. So I seceded and allowed him to choose a cleaning person to come over once a week. He told me I could just go upstairs when she arrived and enjoy some quiet time with the dogs.

“Shifty”, we’ll call her, arrived about a half an hour late. She explained that the traffic was just terrible and it took her almost an hour and a half to get to the house. At that hour, about 9:30am, I had already experienced 2 hours of severe nausea and trudged through a shower so that Shifty didn’t think cleaning me was part of the job. So, I did my best to sympathize with her long drive and quickly explained that I would be upstairs with the dogs. “Go!” she said. “Go on up there and relax. Leave it all to me.” So I did. I took an hour-long nap and woke up to watch an episode of Friends while she cleaned.

I finally came down to check on her. She was in my bathroom. I asked her how things were coming.

“Oh fine. Except everything in here is broken.” She pointed to the bathtub, inside of which was the shower head, a wall hook, and a pretty silver stand-up mirror usually positioned next to my sink. “See? It all broke while I was cleaning. Seems like everything in here is falling apart.” Mind you, our house is 5 years old. And the wall hook and mirror didn’t actually come with the house, so I couldn’t imagine that things were just suddenly “falling apart.” Too nauseous from the fumes to care, I told her to leave them there and David would fix them. I should have taken it as a sign from God to send Shifty back where she came from, but my sign-reading skills were glazed over with nausea and general ickiness.

I walked into the kitchen searching for something to eat. I found some macaroni and some ketchup, which I combined in a large bowl and began to carry back upstairs with me. On my way, Shifty asked me, “Oh! By the way! Did you mean to put this table here?” She pointed to the table along the back of our couch. I considered what the hell kind of question this was for a few moments. Did I mean to put it there? No, I dropped it along with a carrot when I came home from the grocery store the other day and just left both of them there in hopes the dogs would eat them.

“Yes, I meant to put it there. Why?”

“Oh! Ok!” Shifty exclaimed. “No problem. I just thought it looked weird and you wouldn’t want it there. It would drive me crazy, personally. Do you care if I move it a little closer to the wall?”

I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. I shook my head and continued upstairs.

I ate all my macaroni and went back to sleep for another hour. When I woke up, I prayed that she was finished. I walked about halfway downstairs before a force greater than myself stopped me in my tracks. I could not believe what I was seeing. I stood there, holding onto the handrail for several seconds. Shifty happened to walk by and see me. “Oh hey, Erin! Doesn’t it look better?”

Shifty had completely rearranged my entire living room. She didn’t just move the couch table. She moved the couch table, the coffee table, both the couches, the side table…I’m surprised she didn’t pull the TV off the wall. I was completely stunned that she would have the audacity to rearrange my living room while I was paying her by the HOUR! I wasn’t completely sure how to respond, and honestly I’m pretty sure I just shrugged my shoulders and walked into the kitchen. You can’t make this stuff up.

Shifty followed me. “Do you know if you’re having a boy or a girl?” You’re asking me questions about my baby now? You invade my life and insult my decorating and then ask me what I’m HAVING? I was so annoyed with this woman, I didn’t even answer. “Well, I hope you have a boy. I had boys and they’re so much better than girls.” Awesome. Thanks for that opinion. I’m a girl, by the way.

I cleaned up my lunch and walked into my room to go to the bathroom. I made it almost to the bathroom before I did one of those cartoon double takes. I turned around, slowly, and looked back at my room. Shifty shouted from the kitchen. “Oh! I did your room like my son’s room! Great, right?” She had completely rearranged our bedroom as well.

Holding my ears to keep the steam from damaging my hair, I b-lined it to the office in the front of the house and called David.

“Hey babe! How’s Shifty doing? How ya feeling?”

“David, she rearranged our house.”

(pause)

“She what?”

“SHE REARRANGED OUR HOUSE! ALL THE FURNITURE!”

“By herself?”

“YES, BY HERSELF!”

“Why did she do that?”

“WHY DID SHE DO THAT? THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW!”

We discussed what Jerry Seinfeld would do in this situation. I decided I was most comfortable just letting her finish and then NEVER INVITING HER BACK.

In the kitchen, Shifty was cleaning up her things. “It’s been 4 hours and that’s my limit. I didn’t get to the mirrors or the windows because there were other things that obviously needed my attention a lot more! I’ll do them next time.” Continuing to insult me after you rearrange most of my house. Certainly there will be a next time because I can still find my SILVERWARE.