Crouching laundry, hidden cleaning lady

I have a confession: I have a cleaning lady. That's right. Every second Tuesday, she graces my house with her presence for 3 hours and leaves it smelling lemony fresh and dust-free.

When we first moved out here, we were shocked that everyone had house cleaners. Even singletons with nothing but time on their hands had people go and clean their houses for them while they sat on their arses and watched American Idol. I was dismayed, and at the same time, insanely jealous.

So I set out to find myself a cleaning lady.

In the meantime, I had Sacha. Sacha being in our house meant pools of dried spit-up, urine and possibly poonamis all over the floor.  It also meant less time to clean the regular stuff - like the toilet, the dishes, myself.

I finally found one.  She turned out to be a total bitch, who canceled on me with fake dead uncle excuses more times than she actually showed up.  And it took her 2 hours and 2 rolls of paper towel to clean the bathroom.  I can do that in 20 minutes with NO paper towel, so I felt that it was a total waste of money and paper towel.

Then Gail entered our lives, with her punctuality, efficiency, and almost stealth cleaning abilities.  I hardly know she's here!  And when she leaves, our house is immaculate. For about 5 minutes  Then Sacha throws his juice on the floor and crushes cookies into the couch.

But those 5 minutes are enough to maintain my sanity.  Knowing that if I don't have time to scrub the bathroom tiles, Gail comes every other Tuesday and can do it for me.  My Baba tells me stories of raising her 3 kids (my dad and twin aunts, only 23 months apart) with no running water, diapering the 3 of them in cloth diapers, waking up with twins in the middle of the night, and keeping her house clean without help.  I must be lazy to have a cleaning lady!

But that's not me.  I don't want to spend every spare minute of my day cleaning.  I could, but I would be a grumpy frump of a woman, more so now that I am pregnant. As it is, Tony and I spend a good hour at the end of the day cleaning my house and getting back to square one so that the mess doesn't accumulate from day to day. So rather than scrub my floor every day, I shrug it off and go play with Sacha and pray that when he's older, he'll be thankful that his house was a little less than immaculate because his parents took the time to play with him instead.