The maid service was scheduled to come out this week. Their usual day is Tuesday, which is when Penny would be home recovering from her surgery, and I didn't want the cleaning to bother her. So I called to reschedule for Wednesday.

(Yes, I have a maid service. Because I don't mind a mess, but I can't stand living where it's dirty. But I loathe cleaning chores. Hiring the maid service was the first thing I did, after paying off my student loan.)

Anyway, my regular cleaning person was booked for the rest of the week, so I agreed to a substitute. So I was expecting things to be not quite in their usual places, and sometimes subs don't change the sheets on the bed. Not a big deal, really.

What I found, when I got home yesterday -- and continued to find throughout the evening -- was that the sub cleaner had taken everything off the counters and floors and shoved them into the nearest convenient cabinet or drawer. Not neatly. Apparently, she (I'm assuming, though I know the service employs at least a couple of men) didn't care how messy my things were, as long as it wasn't visible.

Or dirty.

She put dirty dishes in the dishwasher, along with the clean dishes that hadn't been put away yet. I think she ran the dishwasher, so it wouldn't have mattered, except that she crammed them in so badly that the water couldn't get to most of the dirty dishes to actually clean them.

I also found some dirty dishes that she'd put away in the cupboard. I only noticed because they were in the wrong cupboard -- which is not what I'm complaining about, mind, because putting things away in someone else's house is always a bit chancy -- but when I took them out to put them in the right place, I noticed they were greasy.

In Penny's bathroom, she took everything out of the tub and off the sink, and threw it into the cabinet under the sink. And I use the word "threw" advisedly, because there were toys all the way in the very back of the cabinet, and the shampoo bottle was laying on its side, leaking all over Penny's toothbrush.

Which infuriated me even more than the dirty dishes in the cabinet.

The half-wall at the top of the stairs is a repository for random crap. The usual cleaning person just dusts over it. This woman found a box that I'd set out to be dismantled and recycled, and dumped all the random crap in it. And then put the box in another room, on top of the box of toys we set aside to give to goodwill. Some of that random crap was supposed to be on the half-wall, as decoration.

In the master bathroom, she'd swept everything off the counter and moved it all to the shelves over the toilet. You know, I understand she had to move it all in order to clean the sink, but she could have at least taken a stab at putting it back. You're not going to convince me that the proper place for my toothpaste is on the other side of the bathroom from the sink.

And she'd taken my fuzzy socks and my orthopedic sandals, which I keep beside the bed because I wear them at night and/or early in the morning, and stuffed them in a drawer in my bedside table that I never use because it won't open all the way. It took me over an hour to figure out where they were. Oh, and she moved some -- but not all -- of the random crap on top of my bedside table into the same drawer. Why move two out of three bottles of lotion?

Oh, and not only did she not change the sheets on the bed... she didn't even make the bed. The pillows were still in a pile in the center of the bed where Penny had moved them that morning.

Anyway, I spent most of last night putting things right and fuming. I'm still a little grouchy about it, obviously. I'm debating whether I should call the service and complain, or just let it go, since she was a sub.

Penny was a bit reluctant to go to bed last night. Mostly, I think, because she dillydallied in the bath so long that I told her if she didn't get out, she wasn't going to get a book. She didn't get out -- so I didn't read her a bedtime book. She was a little distressed about it.

But when she yelled, "Mommy, come back!" as I shut the door, I said -- nicely, but firmly, "Go to sleep, sweetie," and walked away. She kept calling, but didn't start crying, so I went and took my shower without guilt.

Well, without much guilt.

After I'd showered and changed, I snuck into her room to peek at her and make sure she was okay, and that she hadn't thrown the blanket on the floor. Motherly stuff, you know.

She was lying on her side, arms thrown up around her head, sound asleep. The blanket was still (or again) covering her, pulled up to her armpits. Which let me see clearly that -- before succumbing to sleep -- she'd taken off her pyjamas.

Heh. Stinker.

--Liz