"Maid" in heaven

I recently caught up with an extremely close friend back home who has settled into marital bliss. Or so I thought, until I discovered, it isn’t that “blissful” after all. Nothing to do with her husband (he is THE nicest guy I know) but to do with her new maid. I couldn’t stop laughing. This friend ( I will write a whole post on her someday because I love her to bits) is the epitomy of cool.  She is incredibly smart, very  funny, really chilled out, and well, not exactly “domesticated”. Hence, I had never expected to have a discussion on domestic help with her. So, of course, I couldn’t stop pulling her leg about it.

On my way back home, I was still giggling over the conversation and I suddenly realised that this wasn’t the first time that I had had the maid discussion with people I least expected. I recall having a banker friend with whom I was trying to make a Saturday morning jog plan. He first agreed, but then later called me and said, “Sorry I just realised, Saturday morning OBVIOUSLY doesn’t work for me-can we move this to Sunday instead?” To which I nodded understandingly and replied, “Oh of course…you would be too hungover from Friday evening drinks”.  “No No”, he said. “My maid comes in on Saturday morning and that’s an appointment I won’t change for anything”.  It took me some time to get over my shock after which I burst into peals of laughter.  Another time, another male friend of mine was in a scarily bad mood. When I asked him the reason, he said, “My maid has just quit…she is the fourth in three months. Now how am I going to manage?” And of course, my smart alec comment about him being a closet Shiney Ahuja wasn’t much appreciated. I even have a male friend looking for brides, who has kept "must be a good maid manager" as one of the criteria he looks for in his bride!

Once I reached home, I took a look at my weekend to do list (I’m a big fan of to-do lists. The first item on my to-do list is “make to do list” which Top Cat finds highly amusing. In my defence, if you can strike off an item as soon as you write it, it motivates you to get through the others. To which Top Cat quips, “why don’t you keep, “strike off first item” as a to-do too? That way, you will have TWO items ticked off…even more motivation!”).  

My to do list went roughly like this:

1. Make to do list

2. Call maid to check weekend timing

3. Maid-clothes for ironing

4. Aircon services guy??????

I won’t bore you with the other items but essentially, I realised that I am no one to laugh at my friends given that I seem to have the same struggles as they do. Even my weekends seem to revolve around the maid, plumber, aircon maintenance guy and other handymen (or handywomen). Guess grown up life isn’t exactly “maid" in heaven!