I'm all out of sorts these past few days. Everyone and seemingly the littlest of things is irritating me no end. This post is one rant of many I have building up inside of me. I think the relentless entertaining over the past week or so has contributed quite a bit to it all - parties, family gatherings, a wedding, dinners etc. I know I will come across as a big petty moany cow in this post, but I just have to get it off my chest.
My helper gives me the moody treatment every so often, and for the sake of not making it worse, I can usually ignore it or let it be, because we all have our bad days, right? But I just can't take plain disrespectfulness. She's been with us for close to 3 years now, and for the first 2 years she was great. She joined us just before Toddler A was born (as I was going back to work full time after maternity leave) and was a great help, clearly loved my daughter to bits and was helpful, polite and well meaning. Although, she clearly is not family, she was definitely treated well and respected as a member of this household.
Then she went home at the end of her first contract, just a few months after Baby O was born. We were glad for her, as it must be really hard to be away from your family for such a long time. When she came back, it seemed something had changed. No longer, were morning greetings exchanged cheerily, instead I was met with indifference, silence and even when the "morning" was returned, it was seldom with eye contact. No big deal, I hear you say, stop being so finnicky and let the poor woman be. Ok, ok.
Yes, she must have missed her own family and no doubt felt that her 3 weeks with them was too short (we gave her an extra week off). But surely thats not an excuse for bad manners? Well, it's not just the morning thing. It's a common occurence in our daily communications for her to not even acknowledge that she heard me, no look in the eye, I would have settled for a mere grunt. Thus begins an era of "misheard" or ignored instructions, weird cooking, general long faceness, teasing my daughter to tears whilst playing (to the point where even a playgroup instructor felt she had to mention it to me).
I was discussing this amongst some friends and relatives and they said, maybe its because she resents the fact that I'm a SAHM now. So to a certain extent, she's lost her "freedom" because I'm around most of the time. So instead of seeing me, as being around to "lighten the load", I'm now around to "keep an eye on her". Well, you know what, since the change in her, I'm certainly glad I made the decision to stay at home and raise the kids myself. She's certainly not doing herself any endearing favours there.
So why don't you just get rid of her? Millions of women who have 2 kids, 2 dogs and a household to run manage perfectly well without hired help. How hard can it be??
To be perfectly honest, if we didn't have a domestic helper, the ensuing squabbles with my husband over who does this and that, who's lazier than who, why haven't you done this, where's my ...., how could you be some gross and unhygenic etc, would probably lead to a divorce ... I kid you not. We're just that kind of weird couple. Obviously, we'd rather that not happen. So for now, this is how it will be, until I go back to work sometime next year (plan to anyway).
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