My housekeeper, if she never spoke, would appear to be a sweet, blonde, twenty-two year old girl who kicks a house into shape.
Unfortunately, she constantly speaks.
This sounds like an asshole thing to say. As in, "I don't want the help talking to me. Please! I am so much better than her!" Quite the opposite. It's not that I don't want to talk to her. I would quite enjoy it if she hadn't developed the habit of taking on the role that most people complain about their various family members taking on. You know, harrassing me about the status of my love life, what am I doing with my career, etc. You get the idea.
Yesterday was quite the ear bleeder.
It was hotter than a broken sauna on the surface of the sun yesterday and still I managed to drag four ginormous bags of laundry to be dropped off and washed (yeah, sorry I AM NOT going to sit in a hot landromat and do that when I feel like the stickiest of all sticky Katamari balls--there are just some things I'm willing to pay for on some days) and get my business cards printed out. The guy printing them was an early twenty-something drummer from a semi-hot stuff local band who everyone pees their pants over and I'm not sure why. He's the only non-snotwad from the band and he did a great job and printed them on the spot. I don't have the heart to tell him his band kinda sucks and that he's really the only good thing they have going for them. That, and their homemade dinosaur heads that are sorta played out anyway. I hope he goes on to bigger and better things because his band mates, well, I sort of see becoming characters from "Requeim For a Dream" when they realize they were big guppies in a little clear mug.
Once I get back to my apartment, things seem to be moving along nicely. The cleaning has progressed to my living room, where I endure a lecture on how, in Russia people who are as cluttered as I am well, they are pretty much mutants who drool and are not allowed to mate or shop in the same stores with the rest of the population. This, coming from a country who came up with Yakof Smirnof. Thanks, but I'm going to take that with a grain of salt as a) I happen to live and do most of my work in the living room and I will clutter it how I want and b) if you weren't so good at cleaning, you'd be fired by now because you still, after six months cannot dial the right phone number to get me or find my house on the first try. So let's not get into a pissing contest. After all I'm paying you two dollars an hour more than you normally charge as well. That's how much I enjoy my clean apartment and don't want some nimrod rifling through my shit and stealing things.
I decide to go take a nap/read my new book.
I discover I have nodded off when, from across the apartment, (it is unclear from whence the screeching Russian accent is coming from), I hear, "Wendy?"
"Yes?" I yell back, kicking my feet on the bed in what can only be described as GRRRRRRR.
"How old are you?" the Russian accent yells over cleaning noises.
"Twenty-nine" I respond, knowing this can go nowhere good.
(Background tidbit: she is twenty-two and has only lived here a year and a half. She is married, no children. She goes to school at the local university and has several side schemes such as a cat condo construction business. I have flyers should you need one built. They're actually quite cool and decently priced.)
"Are you going to have childrens?" she asks from somewhere in the house as I am hanging my head over the side of the bed in torment.
"No." I say, choosing short answers as the best way out.
"No!? She says, incredulously. "You know, if you cannot have them, you can adopt."
I sigh heavily, which she cannot hear over whatever the hell she is banging around.
"Lilia, some people are just not meant to have children and I am one of those people."
"Really? That's so weird!" She exclaims, I'm sure thinking of the outcast and mistfit I would further be in her country, possibly even having to move in with Yakof Smirnof. Although his house is probably immaculate, being Russian and all.
There is some silence in which I think the conversation is over and I close my eyes and listen to the sound of the trains in the distance. I should not have gotten too comfortable.
"Who is going to take care of you when you are old?" she yells from what sounds like the cat closet in my living room.
I decide to just lay it on the line.
"Oh, my friends. Or you know, maybe my cousin and his children he will probably have. He's definitely having a lot of children."
"Your friends?" she says, like I have said Satan instead of my friends.
"Yes, whoever is the least infirm takes care of the rest. That's what we have agreed upon. We're building a compound. Spouses are welcome if they are cool with drinking and random cartoon watching and quiet reading time. And just other crap."
I can hear her thinking. "But how do you know you will still be friends with these people?"
Thank you, oh people or whatever runs the universe. YES.
I answer, "How do you know you will still be married?" (Oh snap, I say to myself, mentally high fiving my brain)
Silence and the sound of a broom.
I turn over and go back to sleep. Ahhh, sweet silence.
Bear in mind it is virtually impossible to offend her. She really doesn't pay much attention to what you say to her. She just sort of talks at you. So while it sounds, again, like I was being an asshole, it was just a quick way to end the damn conversation I didn't want to have and really was none of her business in the first place.
I suppose someone in my life has to harrass me about this crap. I was living on easy street to long with such a nice family who let me live how I wanted and accepted me for whatever I was and cheered me on even if I decided to wear one of those hats with the propellers on it. In fact, they would love that.
I guess everyone has to get it from someone. Luckily, I only get it in small amounts from a twenty-two year old Russian who builds cat condos for low, low prices.
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