I am a single man who happens to own my own house. I have a decent job and quite frankly, I'm paid a mint. Having simple habits, most of this I'm squirrelling away. I have plans for the future and a little nest egg won't hurt. (A rather fat nest egg actually - I'm doing OK.)
Do you know the main problem with owning your own house? Housework.
Gardening? It's a breeze. Take an hour or so to run the lawn mower over the yard every couple of weeks and whipper-snipper the edges and the gardening is done.
Dishes? That's what a dish washer is for.
Laundry? Toss the laundry into the washing machine once a week and then into the drier. Let the machines do the work.
But housework? Real housework? I hate it. I don't want to waste my time sweeping floors, vacuuming rugs, spraying and wiping down surfaces, clearing away cobwebs. I make more mess tidying up than I actually tidy up. It's a pain.
So what do you do when there's a job you hate and has to get done? You refer to paragraph one, sentence two above. The part that says I'm paid a mint. You scrape a few dollars out of that mint and hire someone to come in once a week to do the messy stuff. Trickle down economics. I get paid, I hire someone else. The work gets done and people go around smiling with cash in their pockets.
Now just because I'm willing to hire someone to do housework once a week doesn't mean I want to pay through the nose for it. I checked with some of those professional cleaning lady organisations and they charge a bomb. It's far cheaper to find a local who wants to earn a few dollars on the side. There are students and housewives out there who don't mind a bit of hard work and a little bit of tax free cash. It's just a case of finding one.
The first year I had it easy. I hired a young Chinese lass, Howin, to do the housework. She was intelligent, hard-working and self-motivated. She did an excellent job. The only problem I had with her was the fact that she was a student at the local university and she graduated and left, leaving me the problem of finding a new housemaid. Howin did say she'd speak to a couple of her friends who would be at the university the next year, recommending me as an employer if any of them wanted to earn a little extra.
With Christmas coming up I put off hiring a new maid until after the new year. It was the middle of January and I was just starting to consider getting off my blot and hiring someone when I received a phone call. A young lady identified herself as Megan. She said that Howin had suggested she call regarding a part time position cleaning. I invited her around that evening for an interview.
Megan arrived at the nominated time and I was slightly surprised to find that she was Chinese. I guess I shouldn't have been, what with Howin referring her. What surprised me even more was that she was gorgeous. Hot doesn't begin to describe her. I was just about ready to hire her on looks alone, without asking a single question.
Wiser thoughts prevailed and I started a proper interview. The first thing I mentioned was her name.
"Your name, Megan," I said. "I hadn't known that was a Chinese name."
"It's not," she said smiling. "My proper name is Mingzhu, but people here tend to bastardize it as Megan, so I've become Megan."
"Fair enough," I agreed.
I went on to explain the work I wanted done, basically general house cleaning once a week. I sounded her out about how she was going at school, got a couple of numbers for professors/tutors that I could use to check her references, and confirmed that she was over eighteen. (I was not having a minor in the house. Could lead to difficulties.) Then I tossed the interview over to her and answered any queries that she had. I had an advantage in references as Howin had worked for me and given me a thumbs-up.
We then had a discussion about how much I'd pay. More than I wanted to and less than she wanted so probably a fair deal. I was not paying her an hourly rate but a flat sum each weekly visit. How long it took her to do the work was her problem. I was happy as long as it got done. (If it didn't get done she'd be gone. This was implied but not stated.)
The first time that Megan came to do the housework everything went without a hitch. She was efficient and willing to work and she also knew what she was doing. Good training on her mother's part, I guess. The second week I received a slight surprise.
During week one the weather had been quite average, the temperature fluctuating a bit but staying comfortable, if a bit humid. On the weekend we had a storm, a big one. Rain bucketed down and the wind howled through the trees, finding the weaker ones and removing them. There was quite a bit of clean-up taking place in the area over the next couple of days.
As if to apologise for the storm the sun came out. On Monday it was hot, and on Tuesday it was hotter. That was the pattern for the week, each day hotter than the previous. When Megan rolled up on Thursday afternoon it was stinking hot. Megan was dressed accordingly in a light t-shirt and shorts. Very short shorts in my opinion but I had no say in the matter so I just appreciated the scenery. When properly displayed, some girls have spectacular legs, and Megan's were right up there with the best of them.
One of the first things that Megan did was to tidy-up and clean my lounge room. It didn't take much work and I suspect she started with that room for that reason. Ten minutes works and she could point to a nice clean room already, apart from the vacuuming.
In the lounge room I have a coffee table. It's a two tiered glass table, with the bottom half on a swivel. Megan spritzed it with glass cleaner and started polishing it up. Coffee tables are low, which meant that Megan had to bend over to polish it. This resulted in me viewing her from behind, bent over in very short shorts, long legs on display, while her bottom wiggled back and forth as she polished. I had to laugh at the sight.
Megan looked at me and could tell I was laughing at her, but didn't know why, which caused me to laugh even more. She was looking annoyed and I held up my hands in a placating manner.
"I'm sorry," I told her. "I wasn't really laughing at you. It was just that I saw a video on the internet recently and the way you were cleaning the coffee table brought it vividly to mind. The resemblance of the situation to the basic plot on the video was extraordinary."
"Oh. Ah, what was the video about?"
Oops. I have a big mouth at times. It had been a naked maid video put out by a group called Money Matters. Basically they seemingly bribe innocent young girls to take off their clothes and work naked, leading on to further bribes and a little pornographic action. I'd only seen the trailer but the tease had started with the girl in tight shorts bent over a table, polishing it. I was supposed to explain this to an innocent young student.
"Hum, yes. Let's just say it was a trailer for a longer video and let it go at that."
"Let's not," she retaliated. "Let's get you to tell me what it was about or show me. If it makes you laugh just remembering it, it should be quite funny. Maybe you can find it and show me."
And maybe a herd of zebras would find a home in my back yard. An explanation would be simpler.
"Um, basically these guys had this young maid come to clean the house. She just happened to be dressed the way you are today and started off by cleaning the coffee table, similar to what you were doing."
Megan blinked and rejected my explanation.
"Well that shouldn't really cause you to laugh. What are you leaving out?"
