Maid Service for a Year

My Christmas present from Mother this past year was Maid Service for a Year! How cool is that? All I had to do was find one, and she would pay for it.

I googled “Maid Service” on the internet and came up with three names (there were more, of course, but I just chose three to get a broad range of estimates) which I eventually narrowed down to the one I hired.

She actually didn’t work out, for one reason or another, so - after months of trying to make it work with my first choice – I finally called my second choice and hired her instead.

I am so glad I did! She has been wonderful. Almost too wonderful, if that’s possible.

Case in point: just yesterday, she showed up at my house for the monthly cleaning. The problem was that I thought she was going to show up the following week, so hadn’t prepared for her at all.

Call me weird, but I just feel that I have to clean up the place before my maid arrives to clean up the place. You know what I mean? At a very minimum, I should at least leave the house alarm off and a check for her on the kitchen counter.

I had done none of those things.

The first thing I knew of her arrival was the phone call from her asking how to turn off the alarm that was screaming in the background. Poor Diane was so shaken from the noise, she had a hard time punching in the proper code – I had to tell it to her twice before she finally got it turned off. The darned thing is quite loud – rather like a 747 landing in your living room.

She was still there when I got home after work, so I was able to write a check for her (Mother had given me a lump-sum check in January, which I dole out month at a time to the maid) before leaving again so that she could complete her job. Not only does she like to talk, but I do not like to see my house torn apart – even when I know it’s for the best and that it simply means a thorough job is being done.

Before I left, however, Diane very tactfully commented on the smell. I love my little Alien no end, but he does have a few draw-backs. Particularly his penchant for peeing in the corner!

I really hate that.

But he just will not go in the potty – so I have placed a couple plastic trash bags down on the carpet in the corner where he likes to go, over which I put some carpet samples from work, a layer of cardboard over that, and a layer of newspaper as well – to get as much absorption as I can. I top it all off with some Feline Pine pellets which can be scooped up and thrown into the toilet when soiled.

It seems to be working, after a fashion – but it does smell. Diane offered up some suggestions on how to mitigate that somewhat, and offered to use a carpet freshener around the house each month to help out.

I did finally leave to go browse the bookstore for a while (but did NOT purchase anything, thank God – I have found that there actually is such a thing as too many books), and when I came home I had a sparklingly clean house!

You gotta love that!