Every two weeks I have cleaners come clean my house. Not that I don't have time, not that I don't know how... I do! Really! It's just that, well my sanity declares it. My husband works almost every weekend so I am alone in the house alone except for when Lexxy is over. I love those weekends and the last thing I want to do when she is over is spend an entire day cleaning dog hair off my sofa or scraping out the inside of my microwave. Not that my microwave gets all too disgusting, it just needs a proper scrape every now and again. I just hate dusting and vacuuming and everything it stands for. If there were a protest against cleaning in Washington DC I would hold the banner at the front of the parade. So for $80 every two weeks it's a good deal! We get our personal time and someone else cleans my bathroom! It's bad enough I have to pre-clean the clutter before the cleaners come so they don't know what I mess I really am!
So today was the every-other Thursday the cleaners come. Since I now work from home, strategic planning was necessary. All dogs were ushered out of the house around noon, minus Phoebe, our 9 year old Jack Russell who detests the outside like a bad case of indigestion. I called Phoebe upstairs and closed the office door, turned the tv on and resumed work. Typically when we aren't home we keep the dogs in the guest room as to not have the cleaners evacuate my home in fear of being licked to death, or at the sight of Phoebe biting the vacuum. I had my coffee and a backup beverage and my cigarettes. I was good to go. At 1:30 I heard the door open as the cleaning was about to begin. Typically they are in my house from 2-3 hours... this was not taken into consideration in my preparation activities for the following two categories: Food and pee breaks.
The dogs outside were quiet, much to the relief of our neighbors and it was a nice afternoon so the dogs were happy in the sunshine. For me and Phoebe it was another story altogether as I settled in to do research on companies I would be calling tomorrow. The noises of cleaning began and then it happened, as if a trigger for Pavlov's dogs, the vacuuming commenced. To this Phoebe cocked her head, got a viral twinkle in her eye and went rabid. She charged the door barking as if she had just seen the season ending cliffhanger on Grey's Anatomy and knew she would have to wait all Summer long to find out if George makes it or not. She barked. She cried. She bellowed. Then for some unknown reason, the cleaners knocked on the office door! 'They can't know I'm here!' I thought! 'Oh please don't open the door! Oh please oh please oh please!'. Now this thought pattern was not because I was afraid of Phoebe charging at and peeing on the cleaners in a fit of excitement of company, I was afraid they would see what I looked like. Today's working-from-home ensemble included yoga pants and one of my Dad's flannel shirts. No make up either. I could scare little children. All that talk about inner beauty is not going to prevent a small child from pointing and screaming at the site of me. Plus I need to shave my legs, thus I should be seen by no one.
The knocking stopped and they went back to what they were doing as Phoebe and I hunkered down as I realized I had to pee. They had only been in the house a half an hour and I felt like I had to go and now! This was not a good thing. Martha Stewart was on tv doing a show on hotdogs. Now tell me, does anyone believe Martha sits at home over a Hebrew National hotdog with sauerkraut and mustard while knitting or doing her recipes for her show? Yesterday she was making a dish that was in this huge pot with 32 lbs of sauerkraut and about a hundred pounds of meat! Martha, how many people does it take to eat all of that? There are starving children in China for God's sake! Ship some to them! I was hungry, realizing it had been since last night that I had eaten anything. So there we have it... pee breaks and food... which one would wear me down enough to make a run for it? I wondered if I could sneak out of the office and run to the kitchen for a piece of cheese, sight unseen.
Two hours later... the cleaners were still here. I had perfected the pee pee dance and sitting cross-legged in the hopes of channeling a spirit of calm to prevent me from wetting my pants. Phoebe was still hanging in but by now her tongue was hanging out and she was squeaking like a new chew toy. The other 5 dogs out back were still quiet. My husband called and I told him that they were so quiet that I figured someone let them out of the yard and that they are now free-reigning it in the neighborhood. I wonder if the cleaners heard me on the phone? Then it happened again. My boss calls me for a call we have scheduled for tomorrow. Drat! They HAVE to know I'm home now! I heard the mop, don't ask me how, and knew they were about finished. As soon as the door locked behind them, Phoebe and I covertly snuck into the guest room to check the driveway to see if they left. They were gone! We both ran downstairs like escaping prisoners of war and Phoebe ran straight for the back door while my mind was on hotdogs. Turns out she had to pee more badly than I did! In two weeks I will make sure she goes out before we play shut-in.
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