Strangers in your house

Well, I had an incident happen the other day, and feel the need to share it here with my friends. As you all know (by now) I'm a cleaning lady, this is my 5th year in business. I'm well trusted and have keys and alarm codes to nearly all my clients homes. As I'm in peoples homes, I know where their safes are, where the cash is kept, where their pills are, in some cases - where their "personal toys" are.
All my clients can trust that not only is their stuff completely safe with me, but that I take a personal interest in making sure that they keep safe about it. I have chided clients for leaving PIN's to their credit cards laying in plain sight of glass doors. I have asked clients to remove hand guns from the cleaning area (OMG I hate guns). And in the past few days a new problem has surfaced: One client now has caregivers in their home round-the-clock.
What's the problem you might wonder, well, lemme tell you: They are in their early 80's, wealthy people in a very big house, just the two of them. Their kids live in other states, so they are alone here in town. Last winter she fell outside a restaurant on ice and whacked her head, and has been going downhill since then (no lawyers, and no lawsuit- please don't get me started, as that's not my point). Ok, she has several large bottles of prescription pain medication in the house. Her husband doesn't know what drugs she has, what she takes, or when. They have cash, credit cards, cell phones, checks, jewelry, etc.,etc.,etc. just laying around their house.
Now here comes 3 or 4 strangers round-the-clock. The woman is not aware most of the time of what's going on, and her husband is playing Ostrich. I know the company that these care-givers come from does not drug test or background check their employees unless there is some concern. Well, honey, I'm concerned as HECK!!! Not (of course) that a drug test or a background check is going to show anything. In this day and age a former employer can't tell a prospective employer anything, including that someone was fired for refusing to take a drug test.
Reading Claudia's blog gave me pause for concern because her mother-in-law is in her 90's and might need in-home care in the future.
So what do you do? Well, as I told Mr. Client: Don't assume that everyone is a thief and is out to take advantage of a situation, but know exactly what you have and where it is. Put away the cash, credit cards, cell phones, checks, jewelry and drugs!!! Don't give someone the opportunity to take what doesn't belong to them. Another client said the caregiver for her blind brother was stealing linens and jewelry (for Gosh sake!!!). A caregiver for my grandmother was stealing booze, and some jewelry mysteriously disappeared. The diamond from her wedding ring vanished in the nursing home.
Be aware, be realistic, know where great Aunt Melba's antique diamond ring is, know how many morphine pills are in the bottle, and know how much cash is in your house and lock it up. Lay out limits for the strangers in your house: They are allowed in this area of the house, not this area (in the case of these clients they have separate bedrooms and the caregivers have NO reason to be in his bedroom). Ask the company that hires the caregives to drug and background check every one that is in your home. CHECK REFERENCES on your own, do you have older friends that have in-home care? Who is it? What are the company's guidelines? Do they have any issues with the Better Business Bureau or the Department of Social and Health Services that you can check?
You don't leave your car unlocked, and you don't walk away from your purse in the grocery cart in the store. Protect yourself and your property, be smart, be aware, and when in doubt or if there's a problem, don't just ignore it, speak up!!!

Still Painting!!

Just a quick hello for those of you that are interested to know... We're still painting! He checked on the status of the sofa and we still have a good 3-4 weeks till it'll be here, so plenty of time yet to finish the paint and clean the carpets... HOPEFULLY.

We have got 3 of the 4 walls done in the living room. Saturday was consumed with a terrible, tedious, hateful job that I NEVER want to have to do again. All the old paint had to be taken off the windows in the living room. This house is around 30 years old and lots of rotton painters have lived here, or the rotton painters were hired by people that lived here. Anyway, the metal around the glass in the windows was covered with all those years of drips and brush wavers from years gonebye. So, our job was to use sandpaper and screwdrivers and putty knives to remove all that. Plus the extra fun job of cleaning out the window tracks of all that cat hair, bug carcasses and dirt. Yuck. Thankfully as a cleaning lady I have lots of good solvents to do most of the yuck-lifting work, but still had to use a screwdriver and a bunch of cloths to get it all out of the tracks. Saturday night, after 8 hours of cleaning, and sanding... We then taped the windows and ceiling, then plastic'd and taped the heaters, put down the drop cloths, and put on the first coat of paint. Finally at 11pm we were finished. I dragged myself to the shower and fell into bed. I was only in need of two Tylenol on Sunday morning to loosen up those sore muscles between my shoulders from all that overhead sanding and scraping.
Sunday, we put the second coat on and went for a 5 mile bike ride. The weather was SO pretty I really needed to get out. First of course was a trip to town to get a new tube for Chris's bike. All last year he fought to keep the one tube going, we have a lot of goat-head plants in our area and bike tires really suffer for them. Yes, we use that green stuff, which helps of course, but the tube can only take so many punctures then nothing will help. SO we biked. There's lots of hills and dales and dogs to dodge. Neighbors down the road have a potbellied pig and a shetland pony, so we try to ride down there so we can say hello to the critters. The shetland was dressed out in her buggy-pulling gear, I didn't see the buggy though. I assume since she's so small that she probably pulls something akin to a wagon. Wish we'd have seen it, have to get a picture next time.
Oh - speaking of cameras: I have the box here and can tell you its a Panasonic DMC-LZ5. When the screen comes on it shows the word LUMIX on it. I took a few days to read the instruction book and am now taking pictures and have been able to view them on the big screen on the back of the camera. I haven't measured it, but I think it's 3" across. The zoom is super easy to operate and it takes very nice pictures. The software that came with it downloaded in just a matter of minutes. No, I haven't downloaded pictures off the camera yet, but I have new shots of Fay and some before-after pictures from a clients house. Also, the camera can take videos and is capable of capturing sound - so when it's Fay's birthday in June again I intend to be versed enough to take a video of her blowing out her candles and record the singing of Happy Birthday!!
Otherwise, I'm sore and crabby from all the work this weekend. Looking forward to a 6-hour Spring Cleaning job today. Vinegar and Water for the blinds and windows. Orange Oil on the kitchen Cupboard, then 2 hours of plain old cleaning!! YAY!! Bye for now!

Where's the rest of the bird?

This morning I woke up to find a partial bird wing...and a couple feathers...laying on the floor in the cat's room. I looked in the corners, and around the food dishes, figuring I'd find a foot, or a head or some other part. Nope, just this one little wing is all the eater left for me.
There's been times over the years - especially when Sassy was a young and feisty hunter, when I'd find a mouse or two a week on the front porch. Not damaged, just laying there for me - left with love, showing me that she was willing and able to provide for me.
Now that we have the cat door, any of the 4 will bring something in the house - sometimes the catch isn't dead first and there was one time I was summoned to the cat room by the sound of a frantic baby Robin hollering in the corner, and the cat hollering at the bird. That one was hurt, and not knowing what to do with it that didn't require a well-placed shovel smack, I took it wrapped in a towel to my neighbor the sheriff, who dispatched the poor thing quickly.
Mostly the hunter in question leaves a foot or a tail or a head: some sign that a meal was eaten...but this time the bird must have been particularly tasty because only the grissle was left.
I realized too today that its been a couple of weeks since I had anything interesting(or otherwise) to say here. I read blogs almost every day and find time to comment, even wrote an e-mail to my dear Moobear today because it's been nearly a week since she's written anything and aside from Sundays she's usually writing something every day. Even in the aftermath of tornado's Grammie had something to say, so figured I'd better at least try... and all I can come up with is dead bird parts... sorry.
OH! I did get to see Fay and Amanda today. We went to lunch then to Old Navy for a short shopping trip. Fay needed badly to take a walk, so we walked around the outside of the mall. She tripped a couple times and got dirty hands. Now mostly she's not a GIRL about things, but she just HATES to get her hands dirty. She looks at me with those huge sky-blue eyes as if it's my fault her hands are dirty - and of course it was because I didn't prevent her from falling down...darn grandma!! Anyway, I told her come wipe that on Nana's jeans, baby. From then till we turned around for the car every time she got anything on her hands -- yes, she fell at least 5 more times being tired and full from lunch -- she had to come running up and wipe her hands on my jeans. Now I have several complete sets of Fay-sized dirty handprints on my pants, and oh how I wish I could tack them to the wall to save forever. Sadly, they're my one pair of work pants, and they're back on duty on Monday.....sigh.
We're supposed to get back to the painting project this weekend. Chris is finishing up the wood piece for the kitchen window and then I guess we're going to start taping and getting ready to do some painting. First a trip to town to find some sort of door to close off the hot water tank area. It's too tight to paint behind there - and the different color will show once we paint the laundry room, so we'll simply block that area from view. Just like when I was a kid and my mom would shut my bedroom door when company came. Out of sight - out of mind!!
In case you're interested, I found a nice lady at Confessions of a Stressed Out Mom. I've been stopping in and just giving away all the advice I can and I'd bet she groans every time she sees I've been by again. Well - heck - I've been in serious debt, been partially employed, been a debt collector, and I have some knowledge to give to someone in those circumstances trying to swim out.
I told my daughter I wish I could go back to when I lived at home and my parents paid my bills and I didn't have to worry about being a grown up with responsibilities. I also told her I wish I could go back to that one turning point in my life and change the direction I took then. We all know that ONE PLACE where if we'd have only gone left instead of right our entire lives would have been different. Today I'm feeling like I wish I could go back there and go left.....sigh.