House Living

I don't believe in reincarnation, but if I had been reincarnated, I could tell you this much about my former self: She had a staff! And no, not a "the staff of Ra" type staff, but a "tell Cook we'll be dining out tonight" type of staff.  A hairdresser, personal shopper, maid, cook, gardener and possibly driver. This became all too clear to me this weekend. I finally cleaned the whole house at once for the first time and all I could think was "Couldn't we send somebody?" Life is too ridiculously busy when you've got to do everything for yourself. So I've decided I need to get a staff. But how? I'm concavely broke, and live in a  place that wouldn't fit all these people anyway. To go for the real deal I'd either need to (a) Marry rich or (b) invent/steal something. Therefore in the foreseeable future, looks like I'm going to have to settle for the lite version. How do you even advertise for that? "Single woman seeks maid, must have excellent hair care experience, as woman is inept and will leave it looking like it does upon waking. Light cooking included."And when I say "light" I mean the Hungry Girl Cookbook "400 calories or less". I'm thinking my best bet is an immigrant who wants to be legal, and who will take a lower salary in return for sponsorship. And non-abusive management, but I think that's a given. Honestly, hats off to single mothers right now. I'm having a hard time doing all this with just me, but those of you with kids, all we can say is "Wow".

Maybe I wouldn't be feeling the pressure quite as badly if I didn't have to go to a laundromat. I haven't done that since college, and I remember it being a lot easier than it is. A lot cheaper, too. It cost at least $10 a trip to do my laundry, and that's with leaving my clothes damp. And it takes hours. And a bunch of trips back and forth since I broke the handle on my laundry basket by trying to do it all in one. I don't think I properly appreciated the beauty of sitting around the house playing video games while waiting for the laundry to finish. Or going someplace while it was running. Or not loosing socks in between the car and the building. It would also help if my cat didn't feel the need to christen newly cleaned blankets by vomiting on them.

Having a townhouse is a little daunting to me. Before, I always just had to decorate my room, because I didn't have a living room, or the one time I did, my roommate did all of that. And the kitchen too, come to think of it. Besides, decorating can get really expensive. When it comes to decorating I've always been comfort above decor, so it's probably not going to look really great no matter what I do with the walls, but the plain white look is starting to wear on me. For now, I finally unpacked the last suitcase (that had been sitting in the living room with all my books in it) so we're going to call it good.

Well, happy days until I actually write again.