Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The End Result

The house is clean. Generally.


I spent one hour in the bathroom scrubbing away wondering how I just paid $150 dollars to get the rest of my 600 sq ft apt. cleaned but she didn't have time to do the bathroom... skeptical.

HOWEVER, the window tracks no longer house the bodies of dead flies, mites and black tar, and I now feel confident that if I turn on my ceiling fan I won't choke on dust. So for those reasons, I am glad she came.

And yes, she was a woman.

Is?

I don't speak English.


That being said, we finally put our wreath to rest; so long to my final reminder of the holiday season. Hello summer. Please summer. Now summer. Oh how I long for you summer.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

My Songbird and Stimulus Package

Cecile spent roughly 3 whole minutes today contributing to the ambience of our apartment via extreme sighs, guffaws, snarls and wailing. No, there was no gnashing of teeth - this time, but it has happened before. The funny thing about it is, I can never really tell you why things happen the way they do with her, but as a joint communications and music major, she is a professional at both, and noises, for no particular reason, may be her forte.


Take for example this morning, yesterday morning, the one before that, and probably tomorrow morning too: "yaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrr laaaaaaa laaaaaaa huuuuuahhhhh huaaaaaaaaah he he ta ta la la la la" - It's the first sign of every morning that Cecile has risen. She is my little songbird; what morning glory.

Cecile is miraculous in many ways. Each morning, as I listen to her wake up and greet the morning in a mixture of groans, screams and melodious melismas, I am usually getting ready for work in the bathroom. Each morning she comes storming out of her door and I ask her if she needs to use the restroom like any normal non-camel human would do. WITHOUT fail she passes up the opportunity and EACH morning she goes for hours until taking her morning pee. THIS GIRL IS A MIRACLE. Is this topic inappropriate for a blog? Perhaps, but I don't blog, and if you want to know what's going on in Apartment 410 then you've got to know this tidbit.

Per the cleaning ladies - I am doing my part to boost the economy, and to be fully honest, I have an incredibly dusty fan in my room and I don't have any of the right tools or cleaning products to clean it... so I put two and two together, and voila! I'm getting a clean house and stimulating the economy without raising taxes. Seems like an excellent plan to me. Unfortunately, in creating a priority list for April Lane's Cleaning Agency (alias Annie's Cleaning), I have seemingly upset the operations manager there, and now I'm afraid of leaving these women alone in my house for a few hours.

That's the other thing... I have no idea if the people coming to my door tomorrow are women... but since they will be cleaning my house, I have made that assumption. Hmmmm, a stimulus package that doesn't raise taxes, and an assumption that women will be cleaning my house... maybe I'm more republican than I thought.


Cleaning Professionals

As a cleaning professional,  I would rate my apartment 4 out of 5 stars on a daily basis of cleanliness. 4.7 stars after a vacuum, with a definite 4.99 stars after a monthly deep clean (being a disco era rental, it will never reach a 5 without complete renovation).  The crumb colony in the corner of the kitchen counter has a mere four members after a post-meal rub-down.  The dishes are never dirty for more than half an hour; instead of actually waiting for a full load to use the dishwasher, we hand wash them and set 'em up to dry in there. 

In my lovely clean abode, I was sitting on the couch, laptop in lap, as I am frequently positioned, when my phone rang its schmoozy built-in ringtone.  It was JENNY! I love talking to Jenny. The conversation went something like this:

J: "Guess what? I'm about to do a huge, very expensive favor."
C: "Cool. What?"
J: "Ok. I'm hiring a cleaning service to clean the apartment!!! It's going to be SoOoooOO amazing! BUT: this is contingent upon us keeping it up so we'll have noooo moreee fruit fliesssssss alllll summmerrrrrrrrr!!" (That's "no more fruit flies all summer" for anyone who can't read past her excitement.)
C: *gulp*

I looked around, perplexed.  I couldn't real-ly find anything that would require "extra help" beyond our daily upkeep.  Thoughts went cycling through my head: about scrubbing the sink any time I wash my dishes; bending down every time a crumb is dropped as opposed to waiting to vacuum; storing my fruits in the refrigerator instead of nicely ripening on the sun-lit counter; when OH MY!--I was reminded of my mother's example, when I was a wee one. In Paris, my Dad's work provided our home with gardening and cleaning service. So what would she do? Trim and primp everything up before they got there, so they would know for a surety: she was a master at keeping house.  I was terrorized by needless cleanliness.  And now, something I thought I left behind is back in my life. OivĂ©, My Poor Life.

It's become clear in these last couple of days that Annie's Cleaning Services are going to go through with it. A time and date has been set.  (I still can't figure out what they're going to clean.) Moral of the story: All I feel is gratitude to be rooming with a cleaner freak than I.  What a wonderful problem and inspiration! Jenny, you're perfect for me!