Cleaning Angels

The housekeepers are due in an hour. There is no way I could clean this house again as the floors alone would do me in! When I was working full time, I tried to clean the house and do the yard work on Saturdays. Oh, and food shop for the week. It was not working. As we could only afford one, Michael asked which I liked better: house cleaning or yard work. At the time, it occurred to me that yard work is rather slow for several months of the year where house cleaning is constant. I answered, yard work.

I remember that William was in 8th grade when we hired our first one. After a few years, she had developed a meth habit along with a boyfriend who was being released from San Quentin. Michael fired her. We waited a few months before hiring Barbaro who was born and raised in Sweden, I learned much later that she lived in a RV and a storage unit, she had huge hands and Michael was a bit afraid of her. When she would tell him he needed to clean the garage, he cleaned the garage! I loved her. When I was diagnosed, she was heartbroken. She would bring me gifts that I knew she couldn't afford. Not long afterwards, I noticed she had a cough that was persistent. Finally, I asked if the local doctor she was seeing had ever given her a chest x-ray? No. She had been seeing him for a year and he kept giving her inhalers and cough syrup. When she demanded an x-ray, she had 4th stage lung cancer. She was able to sue that doctor, was treated at the county hospital by very kind and excellent doctors and spent her final days in a nice hotel room paid for with the $125,000 she got from the lawsuit. I still miss her. We were friends. She taught me so much.

I was ill and really not doing well when she died but I just couldn't hire someone while she was still alive. Before her death, Ron next door had hired a woman who had a business in town. We hired her after Barbaro died. She had a small group of 30-40 year old women who were assigned to a house so we had the same cleaners week after week. She was and is always professional and the women are always kind and very honest. I so appreciate them. They are my angels.

While they are here today, I am going over the pass to pay some bills but not to visit my mom. She has the horrible cold that Michael has been fighting. We are not going to see each other until later next week, if she is better. Later, I am meeting Natalie to have our toe nails done and a got chat. This is going to be a big day for me.