I've Been Glory-fied

Wow, I'm behind. I've been doing a lot of other writing in the last week...and pressure washing. I spent a total of like 10 hours pressure washing last week. I have no inclination of turning it into a business though. (Confused? Check out Dream Come True?) For one, I can't seem to go more than 5 minutes without getting tangled up in the cord, the water hose, or the hose of the pressure washer. This leads to curse words, water spewing everywhere, and a red-faced Natty. I'm not cut out for this crap.

The other day, I was attempting to wash my sheets in that bleary-eyed state of I-just-woke-up-and-I'm-not-quite-sure-of-the-world's-existence, and I accidentally dumped the fabric softener into the compartment for detergent. First of all, my parents have some fancy new-fangled machine that supposedly saves water and there are way too many compartments. Second, I'm not used to using fabric softener. When I was a poor college student, that was one of the first things I skimped on. Why have soft clothes when I could, you know, eat, or drink beer?

Well, shit. How did I know if this mistake wasn't going to fuck something up in the inner-workings of the fancy machine. So, I ran up the stairs into my mom's room and said, "Mom, mom, I made an oops," like I was five years old and she hadn't just spent a kajillion dollars on my college education. Turns out, it wasn't that big of a deal, but still...

When my parents and I lived in South Africa, we inherited a live-in housekeeper from the people who lived in the house before us. Her name was Glory, and her story is pretty fascinating...and depressing, but that's for another time. She was incredible. She mopped two or three times a week, washed all of our clothes almost daily, washed dishes, cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen all the time...basically, she spoiled us. We'd never had this luxury before. (Not to mention, we also had a gardener named Fanny who kept our yard BEAUTIFUL.) Every once in a while she'd majorly screw something up though. She'd wash dad's shirts with a pen in the pocket, she'd shrink my shirts, she'd leave the hot iron on a shirt long enough to leave a triangle burn mark, she'd bleach something she wasn't supposed to, etc. After any of these mess-ups, she'd run into the house yelling, "Ma'am, ma'am, I made mistake," in her broken English and Tsutu accent. To this day, I can still here it. I miss her voice, and the way "ma'am" always sounded vaguely close to "mom." Anyway, obviously, we never got angry about her mistakes; we just coined an adjective to describe the item...it was "Glory-fied."

When we came back to the US, my mom wished she could have brought Glory with us. She had become our friend, and she was also nice to have around for all that shit you didn't want to do. Now, instead of Glory, she has me. Hence why I'm pressure-washing, cleaning the house for company, washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, doing laundry, and yes, screwing up a lot. Mom's even started calling me Glory. Not sure how that looks on my resume...but hey, it's something.