Maid Service

Two posts in two days! The madness!

I'm hunkering down in my bedroom. The Dude and I decided to get maid service today. There's going to be some filming in our home and we don't keep this place that up to snuff. It's "lived in" around these parts.

Truth be told, it's messier, generally, than I would like. The Dude is a sloppy guy. He leaves too many spills, his dirty laundry coats the bedroom and he doesn't rinse his hairs down the sink after he shaves. So I have a few options: 1. Clean after him myself, 2. Nag him until he does it, 3. Learn to live with it, or 4. Hire a maid.

My method is a selection of all of the above, mostly 3, a touch of 2 when I think a dirty habit is worth forcing some change upon him, occasionally 1 when he's not around and I need things cleaner, and infrequently 4 if the situation justifies it. Today would be such a situation.

I feel odd having someone clean while I goof around, but I was a chamber maid in a hotel once. There were two things I hated while I was working: people hanging around in front of me while I was trying to clean, and worse, people trying to help me, which was no help at all because they slowed me down and messed with my mojo.

So I'm downstairs, away from the maid's efforts, and leaving her well enough alone to go about her business without intruding. It feels off for me, but based on experience, I'm pretty sure that's what she'd prefer. I can hear her bustling away up there, things sound like they're happening quickly. It's the pleasant hum of someone who knows what they're doing.

The Dude is with his brother this afternoon. He's working on a wedding project that had been his idea. No doubt he regrets it now. It's a display for the seating cards.

I bought these wooden tags, pink twine, some blackboard paint and rollers, and a chalkboard marker. I got the idea when I was trying to figure out a way to do a seating chart that, while being nice to look at, allowed me to make last-minute changes and yet work on it in advance, without having to print or frame anything, without selecting everyone's specific seat for them.

This was my answer to those concerns. It was alterable, something I could start any time, and I would not need to frame a thing or involve a calligrapher (Blackboards lend themselves aesthetically well to personal penmanship).

I would paint two tags per person, one rectangle, the other a circle, write their name on one and the table on the other, and then string the tags together with the twine. The Dude suggested we make a valet-key/hotel key-like display to hang them on, and I'm not one to turn down creative ideas I don't have to execute, myself. So that's where he is, getting wood and framing cut to size.

We stained the wood last night and it looks like a kitchen cupboard from 1987. So we'll be doing a white wash on it to keep the pronounced grain but lose the yellowing in the wood, making it more contemporary. Just one more step the Dude hadn't counted on. Such is wedding planning in general.

I really should post photos of this project, but the wood is gone right now, and even if it wasn't, I wouldn't feel natural disturbing the maid so that I could take photos of some apparently random planks of oak strewn about the apartment.