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Sunday, March 16, 2008

A Man Needs a Maid

The lyrics of this Neil Young song are ringing in my ears today. I'm feeling like a man lately, what with bringing home the bacon, and frying it up in a pan (yum, bacon), so the two-day house cleaning and grocery shopping frenzy that needs to be done on the weekends is wearing me out. I'd rather go to the movies, or go out to lunch, or both. So, I think I need a maid.

Are there Man Maids? Hey, wait, wasn't that a movie that was filmed here about a year ago? Not the Jennifer Ainiston one, another one. A movie about a man who is a hotel maid. They shot the movie in Redmond or Madras. It was an independent movie. I met the directors mom and dad, they were in town. Nice folks.

Anyway, I wouldn't mind having a Man Maid, but I bet my husband would prefer a Woman Maid. I was a maid once, actually. I worked at Jackson Lake Lodge in the Tetons, as a hotel maid.

Hardest job I've had, except that bad summer of waitressing at Deb's Drive-In Diner on 7th Street in Eugene. That summer convinced me to save money, finish college, and not buy a hot Chevy Nova with a suped up stereo system that forced you to work 10 hours a day with crabby people and still live at home with your mom for six years in order to pay your car payment. That was the other waitress who worked there.

Being a resort maid while you're in college has it's perks. Lots of hiking, swimming in waterfalls, flirting with "House Boys" at the employee bar on Saturday nights. I even dated the manager of the gas station. Those were good times, for sure. Except I really did have to work 9 hours a day scrubbing toilets and changing sheets and being nice to people who treated me like a maid

But thank goodness, all that maid stuff ended when I got my college degree, and moved onto my first "real" job in the mail room of an engineering firm. I was the mail room clerk. It wasn't so glamorous, in real life, despite what you might think, but I didn't have to wear rubber gloves.

I figured I was done being a maid forever, and I'd never have to scrub toilets again. Then I got married and had three kids, and then, unbelievably, 15 years later, I accidentally rented a house that has five toilets, which is where I live now. So now I find myself in this horrible situation of having to spend my weekends cleaning.

We can pretend I'm a maid at home, but I'm really not. I'm more of an all or nothing type; I let things go for a few days, then have a nervous breakdown on Saturday afternoon because the house is so messy that I can't invite anyone over. I love to invite people over.

You know people like me, I'm sure.

We call you at the last minute and say things like "gosh, I'm so sorry we have to cancel, we've come down with a sudden flu. Yeah, I know, you really don't want to come over here, it's a nasty bugger. You need to protect your children from this thing."

And then we say things like "Um...no, that wasn't me and the kids you saw at the movie an hour ago, we're sick. But, it's weird, someone else said that last weekend, too. I think we have a twin family, they look just like us. Yes, it's unbelievable. But anyway, I have to go, I'm so wiped I can barely hold the phone, and I think I have to take at least one kid to urgent care now, so, maybe next weekend?"

And then we have to say, "Oh, no, no, it's not that, I know you don't care if my house is a mess, don't be silly. The house is actually clean now. Yep. Super clean. No, all that cleaning didn't make me sick, we, uh, hired maids. Uh, huh. Two maids. An upstairs maid and a downstairs maid. A couple, actually, a man and a woman. And you know what's weird, they kind of look like us, too."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I worked at that same burger joint also, and some of the co-workers were really mean. Most of them did not like people who were going to college. Did you work with that older woman who called everybody "Dollface Delight"? She really didn't think anybody was a dollface, it was just a cuss word in disquise. I had a regular customer who we nicknamed "I said to myself, I said." That was her way of beginning stories about airplanes landing in the parking lot (I could never see them, but she was adamant.) Good for you for blowing that pop stand, even though it meant sacrificing the Nova for the VW bug. ... A.K.

Anonymous said...

There are lots men out there who would like to be maids. Lots. Probably pay you to let them do it. Some would be half serious about the work too, though others would be demanding and not what you want.
You provide the uniform and some hard demeaning discipline, and a few would work like trojans in lace.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, those nice folks took from everyone in Redmond, didn't give them film credit and didn't return items after the film ended. Good crew members quit because of dishonesty. Could have been a good film. L.A "values" trump being real in a small town. So sad to use all those people like that and have a crap film as a result.