My name is Catherinette, and I’m a Mexican who hates cleaning. And doing yardwork. And eating salsa, beans, or guacamole. And I’ve never been on a donkey. Nor have I ever slept on a dirt floor.
In short, I am the worst Mexican ever. I bring shame on my family. Which is just as well because we Mexicans don’t do honor killings and we’re not big on the shame thing. Though we are big on the guilt thing. We’re like Jews, only we eat pork and don’t keep Kosher.
How’d we get here? Oh, right, bad Mexican.
I make a pretty good living, and the bonus is that since I’m single I can spend all my money on alcohol, overly priced food, and handbags. No need to worry about buying shit for my kids or figuring out how I’m going to put them through college. This is one major bonus about not being a mother. AND one of the kick ass things about being single is I can spend my money any way I want. I don’t have to get into an argument over whether he wants to buy golf clubs while I’d rather shell out the money for a new pair of Tory Burch flats.
Over the last few months I’ve been thinking about how much I hate cleaning my house. My inner lazy Mexican is creeping out. Yesterday I hired a cleaning lady – a Polish one. My hard earned money will now be given to her so she can make me feel even more uppity and Yuppie than I already do. So there I was feeling high and mighty about myself because:
- I can afford a cleaning lady
- Clearly I’d be helping her out because if you have to clean for a living, then you need the jobs
Scratch off number two. We sat and chatted for about an hour. Man, Inga is SMART! She’s been in the states for a little under 7 years, and when she was in Poland she was in banking – but she had a high position. Sweet apartment, sweet lifestyle, loads of travel. Then she married an American man who was a little older than she was. They had a long distance marriage and she started sensing that there was something wrong. You can imagine her surprise when she showed up at his front door in Boston with a suitcase in hand and told him that she wasn’t doing the long distance thing anymore. Not only was he surprised, but so was his much young mistress who was laying on the couch.
BAM!
And her life changed in that moment. She was in a country where she didn’t speak the language, and only had her suitcase and $200 in her pocket.
As she’s telling me this story yesterday I was thinking to myself, “I’d have called my mom and told her to wire me my money for a plane ticket home.” But she stayed. She divorced his ass, learned the language – though her English is broken, and has done pretty well for herself. Girlfriend may clean houses for a living, but whatever she’s doing is working out for her. Know how I know? She has a pretty nice apartment in Rittenhouse Square (which is the fancy party of Philly), and I saw her pulling away from the curb in a relatively new black Volvo station wagon with leather interior. Hands down beats my 9 year old, rinkety, Toyota Corolla.
She’s doing something right – or else she’s in the mob!
Tags: just a thought