February 5th, 2010
A housekeeper like no other….
What to do about our housekeeper? She’s a nice woman except for a few foibles. She’s hard to communicate with, stubborn, forgetful, and lately she’s taken to watching television and using our computer.
Her mishaps, at least in our family, are legend:
Remember the time she left a bag of garbage on our new white couch?
Or when she Windex-ed one of our birds to death?
Or how she sewed a pocket closed on a pair of my gym shorts?
Or what about how often she leaves our back door unlocked after finishing for the day?
Our house is plastered with homemade signs reading “Do not touch.” This is a relatively new development bought on by the purchase of a complicated German-made dishwasher. I begged our housekeeper not to monkey with it and she promised she wouldn’t, or so I thought. But soon after, I happened to be home when I saw her spinning the dial like she was Vanna White and I firmly told her to stop. Machines tend to be complicated, you know, and a pain in the ass to fix. After that, I began putting up signs whenever we bought a new appliance.
My wife and I spend a fair amount of time each week hiding the clothes we do not want her to “fix.” We scramble for that last good hiding place, the one the housekeeper has not yet found. It’s not easy.
Just last week, I noticed that someone was looking up Turkish song lyrics on our computer. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that it was our Turkish housekeeper, who lately has also been watching our television. I don’t really mind her using either device except, after she leaves, they’re not normal. I ask myself, do I really want a keyboard that only features Cyrillic characters?
My favorite moment lately was the time my wife bought three shower curtains, figuring she’d keep the one she liked best. My wife hid the curtains but, when we came home, the housekeeper had picked out the one SHE liked best and had put it up. We went with her choice.
The obvious question is, why do we keep her? Well my wife would sooner move than fire her. This is a woman who once told her dentist — who she hated — that we were moving to Florida so she could go to a new dentist. Two weeks later, we ran into him on the soccer field where we were watched our sons compete against each other. “He’s on the traveling team,” she yelled.
For now, we’re keeping our housekeeper. I think we’d miss the entertainment.
My co-worker and I are standing here at the Information Desk (public library) and chuckling about your trials with your housekeeper. Have you read The Help: A Novel by Kathryn Stockett?
no i haven’t but thanks for the heads up. i’ll check it out. glad you enjoyed the post.
I can’t figure out why you keep her!!!! Very funny.
Now this is weird. Getting into bed on Friday night, the same day the aforementioned housekeeper cleaned our place, I noticed there were new sheets on our bed — sheets I’d never seen before! I can’t imagine where they came from!
And the next morning, in my jewelry drawer, I found my string of plastic pearls, pearls that I had dropped behind a built-in-dresser with absolutely no access to area behind it. I loved those pearls and had tried desperately to fish them out, but I couldn’t even see where they had fallen. But somehow, our housekeeper (who didn’t even know about the missing pearls) had managed to find them.