I fear if I complain about this I’ll have people feeling the opposite of sad for me and more enraged or annoyed that I felt entitled enough to even mention it.

Here goes, deep breath, my very best girlfriend was supposed to meet me for lunch yesterday and she completely forgot.

Okay, that’s not what happened at all.

My cleaning lady was scheduled to clean my house and she totally forgot and left me in a last minute scramble.

I bet you felt sorry for me when you thought it was a friend standing me up.

Here’s the problem.

I recognize when anyone complains about someone cleaning their house, they sound like a princess whose glass slippers are pinching at the toe a little. I get it. But I was really stuck yesterday.

I had stripped the beds, tipped the kitchen chairs so the crumbs would gather in an obvious pile, left the cleaning supplies out, the door unlocked, opened the windows and thought “Wow these screens are filthy,” made a child-like attempt at putting away the Lego, planned a morning where I would busy the kids at a park or grocery store to give the cleaning lady total, uninterrupted freedom and access to my underwear drawer and she never showed.

The kids asked me, “Are you mad Mommy?”

How could I be mad? What if something had happened on the way to our house? What if that nasty smoking habit finally caught up to her?

No I wasn’t mad but I was scrambling to clean things and get the house back in order resigning myself to the fact I was NOT sleeping with hospital corners  last night. Sigh.

I left a message for our cleaning lady and a few hours later, I received a reply.

“Hi Liz!”

“Hi! Are you okay?”

“Yes. How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

Um, where is this going?

“I worried when I didn’t see you today.”

“I forgot.”

“Oh, that’s okay.” (squeezing my stress ball in one hand, Windex rag in the other)

“I can come right now.”

“Are you sure?” (Praise Pitbull)

“Yes, it’s no problem.”

I think that’s what she said. I hung up right after I thought I heard the letter “y.”