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Cleaning Lady Blues

The Fates have determined I’m not going to have a cleaning lady, I think. Unless the people who are here today do an exceptional job in the one hour I’ve given them, (at $50 an hour it’s all I can afford) they’ll be history and once again I’ll be reduced to cleaning my OWN house.

Stephanie disappeared. (See “A New Love”, Dec. 4/07) After doing a great job the one day I had her, she was set up to come on a Monday and I then found out I was having visitors on the weekend prior. I called to change the day to the Friday. She agreed to come that afternoon. The morning she was supposed to come, she called and said she had the flu. She said she would still come, but I learned my lesson the hard way about inconveniencing people for my own selfish whims a few weeks back when I was supposed to go in for my mammogram. Since it was a snowy day they asked if I could come in at an earlier time because the nurse wanted to leave early. Since that wasn’t convenient for me, I said I wanted to keep my original time of 3:45 pm. Well, that’ll learn me. She used my tits for punching bags during the preliminary exam so I guess she was not happy with my decision.

In Stephanie’s case, I knew she would not be at her best if she had the flu so when I asked her how she felt (“like crap”) so I said, OK just stay home and get better. She said she would still come on the Monday as planned. But – she didn’t show. It was pretty snowy THAT day – she was coming from all the way out in the country -  and I figured she was likely not feeling up to par yet so I let it go, but I called anyway later and asked could she confirm she was still coming after Christmas (at that point I still thought Lloyd’s girlfriend from California was arriving on New Year’s Day), but I didn’t hear anything from her. I tried a couple more times over the next weeks, left pleading messages but my calls were not returned. I finally had to accept that for whatever reason she had decided she wasn’t going to “do” us any more so I started looking for a new girl.

I found two numbers at the grocery stores and started calling. The first girl that came out sounded great and her price was right but she didn’t supply any of her own cleaning products – or a vacuum cleaner. My vacuum cleaner is not great so that was a bit of an issue. I said I’d keep looking but would let her know (mistake.)

The second lady that came is staring a business and works with another cleaner so two gals come and do a blitz. They are here right now and seem to be doing fine with two vacuum cleaners going, but since I’ve only got them for an hour they are pretty much concentrating on the floors (the front hall looks great though.) At $50 an hour I’m not sure I can afford them for two hours every other week – and Redman thinks that’s just too much. Even though I’m paying for it. And they seem to have a lot of rules about moving heavy things, climbing, etc. And if they use their own vacuum I have to supply the bags. Sheesh. I thought I’d try them out anyway for an hour and see. I could probably do an hour and a half, providing the get the job done. Anyway, I had already decided yesterday that I probably wasn’t going to keep them on so I called the first girl again. But her schedule is all filled up now and she fund someone who wanted a weekly clean instead of bi-weekly so no joy there.

In desperation I tried Stephanie’s number again. But it’s been disconnected. The lengths some people will go to not to have to clean my house!!

Filed under General, Jan 14, 2008
 

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The Website Make-Under

This is the way things usually go in my business:  I get a call from a company that wants their website to be upgraded. Usually the existing design is pretty old-school – either it’s few years old and needs freshening up or was done by a near-amateur, someone’s nephew, the high-school intern, you get the picture. It’s not always a botched job, it’s just getting stale and needs a rethink. I’ve even made-over some of my own website designs, and with some clients it happens every year as a matter of course.

My job then is to give the website a facelift and maybe add some new features, rethink the front page, navigation and content, improve the SEO, that sort of thing. The client ends up with a fresh new look and everything is good for a couple more years. It’s kind of like repainting the house, and maybe doing a bit of renovation in the process.

With this in mind I sometimes take a look at clients sites that I haven’t been asked to work on in a while, just to see if it’s time to suggest an overhaul.

I did a website for a trucking company a few years back and though we did some work on the home page a couple of years ago (adding animations, against my better judgement!) I hadn’t been asked to do any upgrades for a while. Imagine my surprise when I visited their site a few days ago and see that it’s been completely re-designed – by someone else!!

Now it does happen that sometimes I get “fired” without knowing about it, or even knowing why. I don’t worry because the number of new clients I take on in a year more than makes up for the attrition, and many of my new clients are referred by satisfied current clients – so I figure I’m doing something right. But it’s a fact of any business that sometimes your customers just move on.

If they hire someone better than you, that’s humbling – and it makes you want to do better. If I see that client has hired a new designer and the upgrade makes me think “I wish I had designed that” – well, that’s a growth experience.

But when I see that a client has hired someone new and the “new” website looks like something that wasn’t even state-of-the-art ten years ago, I just go “WTF?”

My design for the site in question, though probably in need of a rethink and maybe not my best work to date, was at least clean, bright and easy to navigate. The “new” site has a dull textured gray background with a darker gray box with a 3D frame for the navigation, clunky oversized fonts, fuzzy overworked graphics, and a definitely outdated feel to it. Honestly, this is the exact sort of website I get asked to re-do. It looks like they’ve taken a giant step backwards in time and I’ve no idea why they would want to do that.

As far as I can tell it was designed by a “real” company – not a family member or staff – but when I visit their website their work is not impressive. Overworked graphics, too much going on, “mystery-meat” navigation, and too much reliance on flash animations.

While I can’t understand my ex-clients’ choice, it is their choice. Maybe it was based on price – who knows. At least it’s not one that’s making me feel bad about myself.

Filed under General, Dec 6, 2007
 

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A New Love

I think I’m in love.

The new object of my affections is a cute and petite 24-year-old named Stephanie. She’s energetic, enthusiastic, and reasonably intelligent. But before you start imagining anything kinky, the reason I adore her is that she LOVES TO CLEAN HOUSES, in particular, mine.

Oh, we tried a cleaning lady before. The first day on the job she was great, but it was downhill ever after. She’d clean the bathroom sink but forget to wipe the faucets. There was always a ring of grunge on the back of the bowl behind the toilet seat. Corners were missed, counters not wiped, the kitchen floor never looked truly clean. And for this I was paying $75 a visit.

After not showing up a couple of times (first, she just needed a few days off, and then it was something about her car) we decided it was time to fire her and look for someone else. However we were hesitant to do that because from all accounts it’s really had to find a decent cleaning lady in this town. We tried asking around but people with good cleaning ladies protect this information with their lives lest you steal them away, if they will even admit to having one.

I’m discovering that having a cleaning lady is the dirty little secret among women who work, but it’s purely a matter of survival. Once you’ve let slip to your peers that you have one, it’s like being admitted to a secret society. Suddenly you learn every working woman you know has one. And I have always said, show me a woman with a clean house and I’ll show you one who either has way too much time on her hands, or a maid.

Anyway, when my old cleaning lady finally called me to reschedule - and since a month had now gone by between cleanings the place got so bad I had to clean it myself, I told her not to bother as we would not be needing her any more. That was a lie, but I had hopes we’d find someone else before long – or at least before Christmas. The plan was to look at the community bulletin boards in the grocery stores and see who was advertising. First trip to Knechtel’s and bingo, we got a number. I called her that very afternoon, and yes she still had openings and was willing to drop by the next day for an interview.

I was glad to be able to show her a house that was reasonably clean, since I’d just done it myself, and she didn’t seem put off by the clutter. She agreed to come the following Monday and scheduled me for two weeks after that and the Friday after Christmas as well, since we are having company in January (Lloyd’s WoW girlfriend from Sacramento.)

Yesterday was her first day. She was late due to bad weather but when she arrived she let herself in and got straight to work. Soon the scent of Pine Sol was wafting it’s way up to my office. She charged me for 3 hours (only $48) and when she had left I could not believe how clean my kitchen counters were. The backsplash was done. The counters under the dish drainer was clean. My grungy Rubbermaid drainboard was clean. The carpets looked great, the living room was thoroughly dusted, my taps were shiny, you could probably eat off my toilet seat (but I won’t, thanks.) The toilet paper end was folded into a little point, just like in a hotel. All day I kept discovering little pockets of clean, like treasures. I’m creaming myself.

So, hopefully this one won’t let me down, like that other one. I suppose that relationship was just not meant to be. But this – I hope it will last a lifetime.

Stephanie, will you marry me?

 

Filed under General, Dec 4, 2007
 

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Break In Part 2

Thursday evening a police officer drops by our house (not the one we had dealt with on Sunday afternoon) and says he has caught some of the people who broke into our house last weekend. They were kids, 14 and 15 years old. He won’t specify who they are or how many of them, but says one or more of the culprits is still at large. But they had backpacks and gym bags with them full of DVD’s and other items, and would we like to come down to the station and identify our stuff and bring it home with us?

Immediately the idea that these people were friends of Derwood’s reoccur to us, and I ask the cop, “Was one of the named E___, by any chance?” He looks at me funny and asks why I would mention that name in particular, and I tell him, he’s been in our house before with Derwood while we were away on vacation and took money and a knife, and he was with Derwood the day he skipped school a few months back. If these were people who were in the house before, he is my prime suspect.

At any rate we go down the police station and are invited to go through three backpacks and gym bags full of stuff. Along with most of our DVD’s we recover several utility knives (Swiss Army, Leather Man etc.)from Redman’s collection, my old digital camera, a small 35mm camera with a broken spring I didn’t even realise was missing, a flash card reader, the digital picture frame, the digital picture viewer (sans cables), the humidor and cigars, a mostly empty bottle of rum, a couple of bottles of wine, two engraved flasks, a postal scale we hadn’t even realised was missing, the anniversary clock, the brass telescope, my kitchen curtain, and my – empty - ring box.

I ask the cop how he caught them. Basically they were seen in an area they weren’t supposed to be in, inside the old Cooper building, trying to stash the stuff. Cop asks them a few questions, knows he’s being lied to and hauls them in.

We sign for the stuff and go, Redman feels a lot better but I don’t, particularly. Not only am I depressed because all my jewellery is still missing, but somehow learning these kids were so young, babies really, makes me very, very sad. We can only assume at this point that someone older and more experienced was with them. Someone who wants to take advantage of the fact that minors can’t be jailed for this sort of thing under the Young Offenders’ Act.

On Friday we get our security system installed and go through it with everyone in the house. Disarm codes are set up. Passwords are given out. More door locks are installed. By Saturday morning we are feeling confident enough to go out shopping for the morning – all the way to Kitchener. I feel like I’ve been let out of jail. We are home by 2:00. Derwood has gone out for the day, having told us the night before he was spending the day with a couple of friends and going to the movies that evening. We expect him home late. He’s also been out the evening before. I can’t recall if he said who he was with but if he had said A___, I would have said OK. A___ was on his banned list for a while but has been given the benefit of the doubt. He just can’t sleep over at his place. Actually he’s not supposed to be sleeping over at ANYBODY’s place, he lost that privilege the day he skipped school with kids he was banned from spending time with.

About 6:00, just as we are planning to make supper for ourselves (Lloyd is at work) we get a phone call from A___’s father, looking for him. We’re told he’s out with Derwood today and along with B___ and E___, and further, that A___ and these other boys, along with someone named Josh, just happened to be the kids who broke into our house, and the police know.

What a surprise!!! My first thought is after the initial shock wears off, I think, Gee, it would have been nice to hear about this circumstance two days ago, after A___ was first picked up. And, further, why the hell aren’t these kids under house arrest or something? E___ is apparently homeless and/or has no parents who give a shit about him. A___’s father is apparently an ineffectual twit who has no control over his little bastard. (He told Redman he saw all the loot in A___’s bedroom – the brass anniversary clock was a big tip-off - and told him to “get rid of it before he called the police”.) I know nothing about B’s parents. I know of B___ and he was in our house in Derwood’s room as recently as a month ago. Josh is someone I don’t know. He isn’t a minor and is now in jail. He probably has all my jewellery stashed somewhere.

It gets better. We learn Derwood is out on the town with these little punks at that very minute, spending his money on them. He just got paid for his first-ever job, $135, and Redman checks online and sees he’s nearly emptied his bank account. We have no idea at that point if he had knowledge of the break-in either before or after the fact, or if he was in fact in on it. We learn from his stepfather that he was “on a sleepover” last Saturday night supposedly with a kid we trust. (Never mind there aren’t supposed to be sleepovers, apparently there are different rules at Mom’s house.) So we don’t even really know at that point where he was last Saturday.

So now we have to spend the evening chasing around town after the little jerk, (after cancelling his security code, of course, lest he lead his little friends back to our house for another go) and the only lead we have is that they were going to the movies. They are not at the early show, so we check out the pizza place next door, look in a few more places, cruise downtown, check out the skate park, the Youth Centre, the all ages café and the Cooper building. We go home for a bit, talk to Lloyd who is home from work by now and instruct him to call us if Derwood shows up. We go back out around 8:30 to check out the second show.

Derwood had told us they were planning to see Transformers, and it’s not one of the movies playing. We wait in the car to see if they show up and they don’t. We have a false alarm chasing a cab that comes and leaves again with no one getting out. We come back and wait for stragglers. The time for the movie to start comes and goes. Redman gets out of the van and goes for a walk around the building to see if he missed anything. While waiting in the car I’m having thoughts that Derwood has decided to run away with these little assholes.

Redman comes back a few minutes later with Derwood in tow. He doesn’t look very happy. He’s been found in the pizza parlour with A___ and E___. I wish I had been there. Redman confronts A___ and asks where the rest of our property is. A___ denies having anything to do with it. “That’s not what your father says,” he tells him. Pizza arrives at the table and Redman (understandably) doesn’t think to take it with him, so Derwood’s so-called friends get to pig out on his dime.

Now Derwood gets grilled – and it’s Bad cop – Bad cop time. We tell him if there was ever a time to tell us the truth, now is the time. He denies having any knowledge that these kids are involved in the break-in – this is the first he’s heard of it. Several more probing questions.

Where were you last Saturday night?

Sleeping over at A___’s house.

So you lied to your stepfather about where you were.

Yes.

Why?

Because I knew you didn’t want me sleeping over at A___’s house.

Huh. So now we know you lie to us about who you’re with. So, anyway, you’re at his house, and he’s over at our house robbing us, and you don’t happen to notice that he’s not there?

I was sleeping. I’m a heavy sleeper.

So how late did you stay there the next day?

Until 4:00.

Was A___ there all day?

Yes.

He neglects to mention at this point that Josh, B___ and E___ all happened to be at A___’s house when he got up in the morning. Somehow he doesn’t think this is weird. But he remembers it later, when he says that E___ had told him on Saturday that Josh has a new gold ring he’s been wearing lately. We’re thinking it’s one of Redman’s.

After sleeping on it and talking to him again yesterday (more calmly) we’re convinced Derwood had no idea, until we told him, what his so-called friends did to his family. These kids make me so sick. They violated our home and then they take advantage of our kid. They must think he’s a complete moron and must have been laughing behind his back all day Saturday while they were out having a gay old time with his money. And to think I even welcomed two of these kids into my home in the past – and they’re still on the street. Rotten little bastards.

Anyway, we had a good talk (and I don’t mean a “good talking to”) with Derwood yesterday and agreed that for the reason he lied to us and his mother and stepfather about who he was with last Saturday, and for going out with people we specifically told him we didn’t want him seeing, he is partially grounded for the time being. He can go out in the daytime but only if it’s with someone we trust or if we know exactly where he’s going. His house code is suspended for the time being so he can’t come and go if we’re not here. We talked about counselling – plus he needs to spend some time with us every day chatting about what he does with himself. We discussed the possibility of his going to some activity like Kickboxing or Karate. If he likes, he can make dinner one night a week. (He’s been taking cooking classes in school.) He can help with the garden. The aim is to get him more involved with the family. He’s a good kid at heart, but he’s made some questionable choices. Maybe if we give him more support at home he’ll get on the right path. We explained everything to his mother and reinforced that there are to be NO MORE SLEEPOVERS – EVER. And this is precisely why.

Kicking him out (although it was something we considered at the point we thought he MIGHT have been involved in the break-in) would never be an option because from what we’ve been hearing lately, there are entirely too many parents who are giving up on their kids. Or not getting a grip on them in the first place.

Filed under General, Jul 30, 2007
 

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Break In

Redman and I went away for an overnight trip last weekend and came home Sunday afternoon to find our house had been broken into. The thieves broke the window on our back door and reached in to undo the deadbolt. In retrospect not a very secure way to lock a house – but this IS Stratford, and we know a lot of people who do not even bother to lock their houses if they go out in the daytime.

I did that once and the house was burgled then, too, a couple of years ago. That time it was kids. They took booze, beer, cigars, small electronic items and cash. The insurance replaced most of it.

They took a lot more stuff this time, including all my jewellery. My mom’s diamond rings, some antique jewellery I’ve collected over the years, you know – the irreplaceable stuff. About 100 DVD’s. More electronics including three cameras. A digital picture frame we hadn’t even paid for yet. A bunch of flash cards and my card reader. Some of Redman’s personal items including Masonic rings and a U of T ring. Wine, liquor, and a whole humidor full of Cuban cigars. They had my new wide screen LCD monitor unplugged and ready to go, but left it behind.

We’ve done what we can - we contacted the police, hired a security company to put in an alarm system with motion detectors, installed some new locks with more coming. Talked to the neighbors. Talked to the pawn shop and have them a list of stolen goods with sketches of my rings.

Redman is not doing well. He’s distracted, worried, and even more paranoid than usual. Perhaps he will feel better once our new security system and locks are installed. He's convinced someone has been watching us and maybe still is and that we were robbed by someone who has been in the house before. We keep finding more things that are missing.

I'm having a hard time sleeping knowing someone has been in our bedroom and standing right next to my side of the bed. I’m kicking myself I didn’t hide my rings in the sock drawer or something. My house feels weird to me right now. I think Lloyd is freaked out - but Derwood? Who knows. Redman thinks it might have been someone Derwood knows. I'm not so sure, these people were pretty professional - wore gloves, took pillowcases from my linens to take stuff away, things like that.

We settled with the insurance but for less than the value of the goods. We will slowly replace stuff we want to replace and forget the rest. I have decided to look for some nice estate jewellery to buy with the portion we get for the rings & stuff, about $6000. And, oh yeah, keep it in the safe from now on.

Filed under General, Jul 26, 2007
 

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What I'm Reading
Middlemarch
by George Elliott

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