Maid Troubles

Ok, I've been catching up on pictures and I'll continue to do so but I really want to start recording our everyday life here in Brazil so we have a record of it.  It won't all be happy; it's a huge adjustment living here, and it can be very challenging, but I will try to keep it balanced.

I'll start with today.  At 7:15am my maid came and Mike and I sat down with her and told her we were letting her go and giving her 1 month extra pay.  It was a hard decision, and I don't think anyone wants to fire someone right before Christmas, but it had gradually been getting worse and we felt she was taking advantage.  Our efforts to rein it in seemed to be going nowhere.  So when she came to me on Monday asking us to buy her a house, after only working for us for 4 1/2 months, it was the last straw.   Well no - the last straw was when she told me she couldn't work the next day because she had her 10th dentist appointment in 4 months.  

It's hard having someone in your home constantly who has a bigger, louder, more opinionated personality than you do.  So I felt like I had my home back this morning when everyone left.  I took all of the laundry to my room, turned on the portable air conditioner, turned my ipod to my old workout mix and started to tackle the mountain of ironing that was left because all of the clothes get hung out to dry.  The first song was "I Want to Break Free", perfect.  It cheered me up!  But ironing is a hot task in the humidity even with the little air conditioner, so, 2 shirts later I was feeling a little less cheery.  The next song to come on was "Mission Impossible".  I just sat down and started laughing.  Last night I had told one of my Brazilian friends what was going on and she said Brazilian's have a saying about maids, "It's bad with them, but worse without them."  We shall see....