Leeches, Bows, and the Shedding of Drudgery

One of the things I love most about my life right now is that I pay someone else to clean my bathroom.

The toilet. The grout. The shower door. Most of all, the shower door. I’ve stopped doing internet research on new clever, multi-ingredient strategies for cleaning the glass shower door. I boxed up the ten thousand bottles of dangerous cleaning concoctions and hidden them away, for what purpose, I’m not sure. I guess in case I run out of money to pay someone else to clean my bathroom.

This was a long time coming. First, there had to be a decades’ long war between my desperate longing for people to clean not just my bathroom but my whole house and my deep belief that one should be able to tend one’s own house without help. It seemed elitist to have a cleaning service. Frivolous.

It’s not. It’s delicious. I love it so much. Today, I came back after the cleaners had left and one of them had made a bow on the stove door.

So, what’s the point of this post? As we say in our writing group, ‘what is this about?’

Shedding drudgery. Not shedding work. I like work. I even like heavy work – like doing the spring clean-up outside. Drudgery is like Mr. Allnut being covered in leeches and then getting back into the leech-infested water to pull the African Queen through the hideous weeds of the Ulonga River. That’s how it was for me cleaning my shower. I’d have to mentally prepare for days. It was sick.

No more. I have shed that drudgery. Cut it loose. Made it a memory.

And now I have all sorts of free time to write about drudgeries I have lost. Meanwhile, there is the bow on the stove door.