1957 called, she wants her husband back

You know when you fall in love for the first time and you really want to tell everyone you meet but you keep it to yourself because it’s probably too good to be true, and then you find out it’s for real so you sing a lot? This is kind of like that.

I have…a mop lady. That’s right, I did it. Much to the absolute horror of my husband I found myself a brilliant cleaning woman and pay her real money to come every single week and scrub my bathrooms and mop level 3 (of 6). She’s not cleaning my house top to bottom or doing the laundry, and she doesn’t have time to do windows or dust, but when she leaves and I’m left alone with my sparkly bathrooms and spot free floor on level 3 it makes me obnoxiously giggly.

The hardest part of this process was telling Jason. Not asking, telling.

My husband is almost the best dude ever. He loves me and supports me and cleans by my side after work and mows the lawn without being asked, he’s willing to watch the kids while I teach lessons or hang with my friends, and he lets me buy whatever groceries I want. I’m not complaining here, really I’m not.

But Jason does not want to pay for a housekeeper. Or rather, in his mind he is already paying for a housekeeper. Slightly chauvinistic? Just a bit.

If all I wanted out of life was a clean house it wouldn’t be quite as difficult, but on Mondays and Fridays I’m out of the game completely teaching voice for six hours with half hour breaks in between lessons. My cleaning time has been seriously hampered and I’m struggling to get to any of the deep stuff. Frankly, I need some help that doesn’t require constant supervision and bribery.

Three weeks ago when I told Jason I was going to get a cleaning lady he laid down on the sticky tiles in the kitchen and kicked his legs a lot.

“Why do you have to do this?” he asked. “This costs money, I don’t want to pay for this.”

“Because,” I said, “I can’t keep up with this big house and the four kids and the laundry and the dog, I just need some extra help. Voice lessons has really knocked out my weekend pre and post game cleaning and I can’t seem to get to the deep stuff.” Voice money, btw, transforms itself into Travel money.

“Well,” he said logically, “Then you should quit teaching voice lessons.”

I seriously considered kicking him in the knee cap, slashed all four of his tires and making him sleep on a flea-infested pallet in the back yard.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Well,” he backtracked, “I mean, if voice lessons is keeping you from being able to do your real job–”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“You know…taking care of the kids and…stuff.”

“Stuff. Don’t you mean scrubbing the toilets? Is that what you’re saying here? That I should quit doing this one little thing that I love, that makes me happy and pays us money, so I have more time to scrub the toilets?!”

Suffice it to say Yvonne has come for the past three weeks and it has made me happier than a first grader on a field trip. Apparently Jason has decided that happy wife equals happy life and has silently endured.

Secretly I think he’s enjoying it.