An excerpt from Real Housewives that’s Not a Show
I sift through every drawer in my kitchen -again- looking for my checkbook. The lawn service guy patiently waits outside, almost knowingly. I wonder if he can hear me rummaging through my drawers, and banging them shut one by one. As usual, I find paper clips in the Advil drawer, Advil in the receipts drawer, and receipts in every drawer.
Oh, wait, what is this? It’s the gym card! I just bought another one for $50 last month since this one decided to go AWOL. Don’t I already pay for that facility through my nose as “HOA fees”? But I suppose it’s my job not to go around losing the keys. Fair enough.
Back to the checkbook. I give up, and pull out my wallet–between the 5s and 1s, I scramble together $25 and hand it to my lawn guy. He looks at me with what I read is a mix of amusement and pity. “Thanks”, he says, as he walks away, probably wondering if it actually took me five minutes to count out 25 bucks.
I close the door and walk through my house. The tops of my counters look as unkempt as the insides of my drawers. There’s a layer of dust on every surface (where you can actually see the surface), and there’s a species of mold that I don’t recognize growing in the left corner of the master shower.
The only cleaning activity I seem to be good with is sweeping the hair from the bathroom floors, primarily because once when I found my (accidental) hair collection on the floor, I remember skipping a beat thinking there was more hair on the floor than on my head. I recall checking the mirror in a panic, and breathing a sigh of relief to find that the lost hair might have been replaced after all, even in my middle age.
I slowly start the pre-clean. I detest calling the maid because then I have to first make it possible for her to clean, which is a job in itself. I longingly think of my childhood days in India, when we didn’t live like packrats, and maids were actually flexible and affordable. Maybe things have changed in India too, but all I know is that now, I’ll probably be spending as much time clearing surfaces, putting away laundry and mail, getting a change of sheets ready for everyone’s beds, setting out supplies, and eventually hunting for my checkbook.
I’ve just given the lawn fellow my last bits of change; so there’s no hope of finding $250 anywhere in that tattered wallet.
The maids arrive. I’m nervous about the way my house is. I wonder if they’ve ever walked out on a client because it just wasn’t worth it. They get to work, and the four ladies literally whizz about in fast forward, and are done in a little over an hour. My house is sparkling like someone put one of those cheap media filters with twinkling stars on it. Only this filter is not cheap.
*@&%!! The checkbook!
I forgot all about it in my rush to impress the maids. I have no recollection where the ” big red book” of checkbooks is either so I can pull out a new one. I look like a sheep whose wool has just been sheared. I’m about to bleat, I mean, ask the maid service leader if I can Venmo or Paypal her when she quietly walks over to me and says, “Madam, your checkbook. It was in the pantry.”
