You better not pout I'm telling you why...
12/10 '17
Patty Lin is coming to town!
It's true. Patty is flying in on Thursday night, and her husband Mike is flying in on a Friday-Saturday red-eye because he has to work a full day on Friday before flying out. They were originally flying out to see Hot Breakfast's Second Annual Very Dorky Christmas Show, but it has been cancelled because the venue sucked and basically didn't want our money. So much for that.
So instead of having a Christmas gig, we're going to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi instead. We're seeing the non-IMAX, non-3D version, because from what I could tell, that's mostly how it was shot. (They said they shot a few scenes in IMAX format, but it was only a few scenes. Meh.)
I bought tickets ahead of time on Fandango, and as of last week, we were the only people in the entire theater. (All of the other theaters were almost max capacity... but that's because they were 3D and/or IMAX.)
In related news, two weeks ago was the 10-year anniversary of me buying this house. I still haven't had a housewarming party yet. I still haven't hired a frau[1] (aka a cleaning lady / cleaning service). I used to use a cleaning service when I lived in Arizona in the mid-'90s, and I kept using one when I moved back to DE. When I bought this house, my fraus didn't want to clean my house, since they specialized in apartments, so I had to find a new service, and I never got around to it. (Not entirely true. I brought one in, but I didn't trust her. She didn't seem to be all there, and she told me that her husband worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and died on 9/11. She told me about the enormous amount of money she received from it, both from his life insurance and also from some kind of government payout. She bragged about her huge new fancy house she had, and she never said "But I'd trade it all to have my husband back," which seemed strange. Anyway, things didn't add up, and I didn't feel entirely comfy with her getting intimate with my belongings, so I after the initial "try-before-you-buy" clean, I didn't call her back.
BUT! Patty's coming to town, so Matt called around and hired a cleaning service that we both feel good about, and they're coming tomorrow (Monday) and I am excite to have a clean house again. And I will gladly give them my dollars every two weeks to maintain a clean house. Hallelujah!
And in addition to the fraus, Matt also called Stanley Steemer to come clean the bedroom carpet, the great room area rugs and my grandmother's two green chairs. I am very excited about that, too.
And maybe the plumber will actually show up and fix the basement pipes, and then my house will be as good as gnu! Did I mention that I'm excited? Because I'm excited. Yay!
Anyhoo, I need to get to bed because we have Bruce Springsteen rehearsal tomorrow and I have to be sharp for it (no pun intended).
G'night!
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[1] When I worked at the law firm in the early '90s, my lawyer told me that the German word for "cleaning lady" is "heinemachenfrau." I fell in love with that word. Turns out it was wrong, and the right word starts with an R, so it's "reinemachenfrau." However, Google Translate doesn't acknowledge that word (probably because I'm likely spelling it wrong), and instead it wants me to use the word "putzfrau" which, dare I say, I almost like better.
So I don't pay for cleaning anymore. I either tell other people to clean stuff, or I let things get nasty and ignore it. Except the floors. I still do the floors. I could ask other people to do the floors, but they invariably do an incredibly shitty job, and then when they're done with their half-assed effort, they whine about how much time it took them or how much it made their arms or shoulders hurt.
There is also the issue of what cleaning costs in rural Vermont. Urban areas, there's enough competition to keep the prices lower. Here, it could easily cost $350/cleaning. Which ain't happening every two weeks, nope.
But... sigh. I still dream about that level of clean.
I'm pretty good about vacuuming and keeping surfaces wiped and I'll clean the bathroom weekly... and maybe we'll wash the kitchen floor every 2-3 months. But dusting simply never gets done. But they dusted absolutely everything in this house, and I am stunned at how much better I can breathe just since they left.
I like the discipline of having someone come every 2 weeks. I like having to "clean up for the cleaning ladies" every 2 weeks as a way to throw shit out, sort the pile of mail, and put the last bit of laundry away.
I am verrrrrrry influenced by my environment, and when stuff is cluttered I get anxious and annoyed... or, I just squirrel myself away in the bedroom and ignore everything (healthy, that). But now I feel like I can enjoy my house again! Squeeeee!
Tomorrow the carpets and my grandmother's two super-awesome lime-green livingroom chairs get cleaned. Wednesday the ducts get cleaned. Thursday I will struggle to not have sex on every surface in my house... lulz.
I've been trying to be diligent about replacing our home's HVAC filter every month... it is terrifying how much dust it collects... and we don't even have pets.
We are having Stanley Steemer come out and clean the ducts today... so that should also help maintain the low dust-levels.
If I'm gonna be indoors all winter, I don't wanna have a raw nose of death from the nose-dripping!
And I can't stop dancing around my house singing the "Hello, Clean House!" song. I am transformed.
This is way more info than you wanted. Haha!
With the Star Wars movie coming out this week, I guess we're going to wait for NFLX (insert joke referencing the time zone shift to Newfoundland) to catch the latest Thor. Haven't been hale enough with time available to catch a cheap Tuesday in all the time it's been out.
I feel like a bad person because I'm not dying to see Thor. I don't know why it hasn't grabbed me. Maybe I just haven't seen the right preview.
You're welcome.