Things have been awfully quiet around here lately, and you might be wondering why. Well:1. I no longer have any household help. Now that I don't have them anymore, I think it's OK to admit that I used to have a weekly cleaning lady and a part-time babysitter who had (because my children are now in school all day) morphed into more of a housekeeper, thus allowing me ample time to
2. I'm not doing much other than housework, at least, since I had seven drinks the Friday before last and woke up with the mother of all hangovers. There was nothing to help but a bottle of Grape-Flavored Liquid Children's Tylenol and a big bottle of that low-dosage Enteric Aspirin your doctor wants you to take so you won't die of a heart attack. (Which is so dumb, I can't believe it. OK, I was an English major and science is not my strong point, but I wasn't going to die of a heart attack; I was going to die because my brain was going to implode and fall into my abdomen, and then I was going to vomit it back up--that's how it was going to happen.) Well, eventually the enteric aspirin kicked in (even the low-dosage stuff is effective if you take enough of it) and I survived. But I spent some time repenting and self-flagellating and whining about my hangover and what-not.
3. I'm expecting a visit from my mother, so everything she could possibly criticize me about has to be done. Yesterday. Which means I'm so stressed that I can't type straight. But one lucky thing is that I
4. discovered the cure for lack-of-cleaning-lady-itis. It's called "child labor." With "child labor," you pay your child (or children, if you're lucky) anything between a quarter to $3.00 to do the dirty jobs you don't want to have to do. A quarter gets the recycling bin pulled to the curb; $3.00 polishes a mountain of silver.
5. I have other blogs to keep up with, people!
6. I need to come up with something to write about for Mamarazzi. Yes, yet another blog. My day is Friday and I'm combing the gossip sites, and nothing is happening. Somebody throw me a bone, please!
7. I still have to go pick up the kids at school and oversee the homework and cook dinner and buy groceries and wash dishes and basically do all the stuff I was doing before I invented "child labor."
8. I just took the kids to the library for books they needed. I got five books for myself. That means I need to read--read like the wind!
'k bye!
there's nothing you can say about the Branjolina/Bradina/Jolad baby?
ReplyDeletethat's why I said no.
I said no because while I was perfectly willing to snark, I didn't want to have to go looking for pictures and then posting them.
ReplyDeleteAnd OMG, you lost your housekeeper?! I would be way too depressed to post to ANY of my five blogs if that happened to me.
Well, Ellen is in repeats, so you could pretend you didn't know that in September Britney and Kevin had their baby...
ReplyDeletehousekeeper...that would be nice. As a child of a diplomat, I never cleaned, except dishes on Sunday, and just the other day I remembered reading as a child an Archie comic where one of the boys left a ring around the bathtub and the mom gave them what looked (to me) like a salt shaker. I was puzzled. I think actually at the time I didn't even have a bathtub, just a shower. My mother blames my messiness on my childhood, but I think it's inherent in my personality. Which Joke tries to mold out of me. You know, the Joke School of Betterment. (We love you Joke, really we do!)
Oh oh oh! Jennifer Aniston is pregnant--if you believe the cover of OK!, which I saw from two aisles away at the grocery store yesterday.
ReplyDeleteI have been living the no-cleaning-help. For a Year. A YEAR, I tell you! I can tell you how to hide any kind of dirt. We rearrange our dirt. And cleaning BEFORE your mother gets there? Are you daft? Leave it and SHE will do it! My parents cheerfully do dishes, make beds, sweep floors, whatever is bothering them. I encourage them to take guests on tours of the house, and the fairly fly into action! I would highly recommend this technique.
ReplyDeleteAnd our babysitter is not only firmly in place, she is going to travel with us. Cheerfully. (again with the 'cheerful'.)
My child labor will only set and clear tables so far, possibly make their beds. Poor little dears fall off stools when they try to wash the dishes.
I like it when my mother thinks I'm making progress, so I do make an effort, but I generally leave dishes for her.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean you're not going to finish your dissertation??? You can't get that close and not finish it -- you...you just can't! *she sputters, closing her previously dropped jaw*
ReplyDeleteJust how many of those itty bitty aspirin do you have to take to clear off the mother of all hangovers?
ReplyDeleteSeven drinks. I admire that. I can't do more than four any more without wanting to die.
For our 2nd day of summer vacation, I had my kids sit around the playroom with clipboards and they made lists of chores they would/could do and corresponding fun things they like to do. Talks with the union broke down after a series of complicated consequence/reward systems could not be ratified. :)
ReplyDelete