My Team

I've become one of ladies I used to make fun of. In a good way, mind you....but laugh at nonetheless.

As a gift, I received a year long, once a month cleaning service. Not Cleaning Lady, but Cleaning Ladies. Whom I adore. The same kind of adoration I reserve for special things, like The Capitol Grille, or, my child. Seriously, they're right up there with my child.

Whom clearly, I adore.

Now that we're all clear on just how I adore them, allow me to ruminate on the panic these lovely ladies ensue: they've a job to do. They've been hired to come and clean. Not just any old cleaning either, but this 25 point (or 22, or 27, I forget) point Healthy Home cleaning. (Quite needed now that Fox and I have been diagnosed with Strep. I could point fingers at the fact that I spoke to Mag's on the phone while she had it, so I could have contracted it that way, but more than likely, I got it the old fashioned way: off the handles of market carriages when The Stores run out of those handy dandy straight rubbing alcohol wipes - another item on the Adoration List) Right. My point. These ladies are arriving, tomorrow, to do this, for me.

And I, like every other woman with a Cleaning Lady I know, am cleaning the freaking house before they arrive. I tried to call Mag's, ask her to talk me down off the ledge of I Don't Really Need To Vacuum, since I'm so fond of the one lady that shows up with a vacuum strapped to her back - and it is, after all, what she's been hired to do. Paid handsomely, ps., to do so. So why do I feel the need to vacuum, or dust (well, let's not get carried away - I'm not tempted to dust in the least, ever, so that's a poor example) - I'll do the picking up part (which is really the part I detest) but I keep sending up fluffy clouds of Pucker fun, and I keep thinking:

They Will Judge Me By The Level To Which They Need To Clean. As though a quick pre-vac rates me higher on the List Of Houses They Enjoy Cleaning. I don't want to be up there with that lady, the one who has them change out her cat litter. Once. A Month. I don't even like cats and I pity that one. And. Geez. It's not like I'm asking them to Poop Police the Deck.

I whipped through the kitchen like a whirling dervish, only to find, I've not all that much energy to straighten (a term I'll use, uh, loosely - not more than an hour needed tops, but still) for the rest of the areas covered by The Team.

Oooohhhh. I like that. The Team. My Team. My Team Of Cleaning Ladies. My Team Of Cleaning Ladies Who Divide And Conquer faster than Napoleon ever did. (I just sort of plucked him randomly, by the way, so if it took him forever to do whatever he did in history, obviously, choose your own, better, more thought out conquerer) I stopped shy of cleaning the stove, or scrubbing out the sink; they even take all the stuff off the fridge doors, clean them, and hang the stuff back up. I know this. I watched them the last time.

But.........I have this, thing, some people call and obsession; how ugly does that sound? Yeah, that's what I thought too - about cleaning my floors. Floors so shiny they scare dogs. I'd love to have them so shiny sunlight blinds people when they arrive to visit. I own more products and electronic machinery I could go into business cleaning floors. I'm trying my best to leave them, all stored away, having even taken apart the ones that require water and fluids, in my attempt to keep my paws where they belong: putting away the last three loads of laundry, folding the sofa blankets - come to think of it, that's something else they do. Fold stuff.

If only they'd hang it up and put it away too. Perhaps iron.

I've been informed, that's an entirely different level of My Team than I currently have.

In fact, no one I know even knows of a Team like that, save for a dry cleaner, who does house calls.

Ps: none listed in the phone book.

Thus, to clean or not to clean?

Pucker looked at me as though I've nine heads, (sad, as I'm having an especially good hair day) answering me firmly, the same way I reprimand her when she eats my things:

NO MA'AM.

That's why you have The Team.

Never do today, what may be shoved until tomorrow.

Especially if someone else is going to do it for you.