Stories from the broom closet #2

Posted on January 13, 2016 by luckyotter

I didn’t think I’d post more of these so soon, but my last article Adventures in Housekeeping: Stories from the Broom Closet, which included five anecdotes from my day job, was both popular with my readers and fun for me to write. So here are six more stories. I was joking when I said I could write a book of these, but I might do just that!

1. We Three.

One of my favorite things about cleaning houses is the pets. There’s a house that belongs to an alcoholic dermatologist, whose retired husband spends his days tending after his three huge Golden Retrievers. Max is the lively one, no longer a puppy, but he thinks he is. Standing on his hind legs, he’s as tall as a tall man. You have to be careful coming up the basement stairs to let yourself in, because there’s no handrail and the dogs are never put out of the way. More than once, Max, in his rambunctious joy over seeing me, has almost knocked me down the stairs while lugging all my equipment. The solution to this problem is to go upstairs first, round up the dogs in the kitchen, and then go back downstairs to fetch my equipment.

Max lives with Dottie, a scaredy-dog if I ever saw one. She’s beautiful but very shy and hesitant, so I think she might have been abused when she was younger. Lex, the third Retriever, is older than Max and slightly less rambunctious, but not by a whole lot.

Max is the dominant personality of the trio. Before I learned it was best to keep the dogs in the kitchen while cleaning, he would try to eat my equipment. One day I went with a partner, and she was in hysterics as he jumped about six feet in the air and tried to grab the vacuum tubes with his huge lion-like paws and pull the whole contraption toward his huge jaws.

The alcoholic doctor, who’s usually sleeping off a binge on the couch in the afternoons, doesn’t seem to care much for the dogs. They are her husband’s babies, and she just tolerates them. One day she complained to me that she can’t ever have anything nice in the house or ever go away anywhere because of “those damned dogs.”

On another day, poor Dottie was in in the way while my partner was vacuuming, and her feathery golden tail got caught in the hose. The poor terrified dog yelped and whimpered. My partner, feeling terrible, began to apologize to the woman, but the doctor was already doubled over with laughter. She held her sides and could hardly speak. After she pulled herself together, she said next time she’d have her camera ready because that was so funny it belonged on Youtube. Dottie, tail now free and unharmed, slunk away and we didn’t see her again that day.

2. The Clotheshorse.

A wealthy (“old money”) older woman lives in an 18th century plantation-style house that has four stories and a pull-chain toilet in the basement (out in the open, unenclosed by anything). The grounds are vast and immaculate, the ceilings and woodwork are ornate, and the house is brimming with valuable antiques. She’s one of my most annoying customers, for these reasons:

1. She is a slob and her master bathroom vanity always has mystery fluids and toothpaste caked all over it. She never picks up her clothes or shoes off the bedroom floor and there’s always about 100 used tissues under the bed. (She suffer from allergies, but I guess she’s never heard of a trash can).
2. She’s obsessed with moving furniture, and every time I go to her house there’s always some piece of old furniture in an inconvenient place, like blocking a doorway.
3. She keeps her microwave inside a cabinet high above the refrigerator. I understand she doesn’t want the “ugly microwave” on display in her Old Worlde style kitchen with its exposed brick walls, fireplace, and hardwood floor, but being that she’s about 5 feet tall, and the microwave gets a lot of use (it’s always coated in bacon grease and crusted on boiled milk), it makes no sense to keep it in such an inconvenient place. I wondered about this until the day I saw her pull a large stepladder out of the pantry to fetch a plate of bacon from the microwave.
4. She’s a world class snob who treats someone like me as “the hired help,” not that I expect or want my customers to talk nonstop either (and some do that too) or treat me like I’m royalty or something. Just being treated like a human would be nice.

She has a huge walk in closet that used to be a second bedroom adjoining the master. French doors with yellow-gray, antique glass open out onto a large deck that contains a hot tub and a gazillion potted plants. In this “closet” are racks upon racks of expensive designer dresses, gowns, pants, blouses, and other garments. One entire wall has shelves built into it that contain about 300 pairs of designer shoes.

One day last spring as I pulled up in the circular driveway, I saw that the French doors upstairs were left open, and all the racks of her clothes were out there on the deck, the garments blowing in the breeze. Obviously she was airing them out, but she wasn’t home. I soon got busy with other things, like scraping the dried toothpaste off her bathroom vanity and trying not to break her collection of miniature antique teapots.

After a while, the wind picked up and the sky began to darken. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I remembered the racks of clothes outside, and I had an evil thought. For a moment I was tempted to leave them there outside to get rained on. The visual of this unpleasant woman’s thousands of dollars worth of designer gowns and dresses getting soaked in a rainstorm filled me with a kind of mean, psychopathic glee. But my conscience won, so I ran upstairs to roll the racks back inside the huge closet and leave the woman a note. I never got a thank you.

3. Trustafarian Animal House.

trust_fund_baby

I really can’t stand people who have everything and don’t appreciate it. There’s a woman of indeterminate age who inherited a huge rambling two level house in one of the most affluent areas in town. The house, which could be stunning, is a disaster. It’s completely trashed by her and her redneck lover, which they share with her five dogs, four cats, two grossly overweight brindle rabbits (who have the whole sunporch to themselves), and a giant turtle who lives in the dining room and whose smelly quarters are never cleaned. The front yard, which was once nicely landscaped, is overgrown with weeds and the winding stone walkway to the front door is a crumbling ruin.

This owner is whiny, loud, lazy, and childish, with a grating voice, but she’s less annoying if I compare her to a cartoon character because when thought of as this way instead of a real person, she really can be kind of funny.

She obviously came from wealth and I’m not sure what happened, because she works as a store clerk at the mall. Maybe even with that monster of a house, she’s strapped for cash. Her lover works in landscaping, but I don’t think either of them works much because they are always at home and they are always high. Sometimes they have friends over getting stoned with them. They also drink a lot. There are always empty cans and boxes of Bud Light or Pabst Blue Ribbon scattered everywhere.

The many animals come and go as they please. The dogs are allowed to run all over the upper middle class neighborhood unsupervised and none of the cats are fixed and the house always reeks of male cat urine. The dogs and cats are friendly, but they walk all over the floor you just mopped and then she whines about the paw prints that were missed.

I remember the first time I went there to clean, she told me to “watch out for dead animals” when I vacuumed under the couch. It turned out she was referring to the possibility of finding dead mice and birds brought in by the cats. I didn’t see any, but wondered if she’d actually live in that house with a dead mouse or bird under the couch until I came to clean again. Probably, given the usual state of the house and the fact she’s such a lazy person who doesn’t appear to ever clean anything herself.

The last time I went to her house, she was sitting at the kitchen table building a Lego tower. I noticed other Lego structures sitting on the fireplace mantel. A huge stuffed Snoopy sat on the living room couch. She said her mother gave her the Snoopy for Christmas. I think this lady is eternally 10. Not that an adult playing with toys is a bad thing, but she’s 10 in almost every other way too, like something bad happened to her at that age and she got stuck there. You gotta feel kind of bad for someone like that.

4. The Jilted Lover.

Dead_Rose

One of my customers is a writer of novels who is probably in his early sixties. He’s a very friendly and pleasant man, who always tips and offers coffee. The first time I went to his house, he introduced me to his fiancee, a gorgeous and very thin woman about half his age. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man his age so much in love. He’d regularly bring her flowers and candy, and the two of them would hold each other and kiss and stare into each other’s eyes like smitten teenagers.

One day he answered the door and I could see he’d been crying. Either that or he had a very bad cold. He smiled at me sadly and I asked if he was alright. He said no, he wasn’t, because his fiancee had left him. I was shocked. Choking on tears, he said he was going to go in his office and try to write for awhile. I watched him close the glass doors behind him, and dejectedly trudge over to his desk.

Later I was vacuuming the area in front of the office, and looked up and saw the old man holding his head in his hands. He certainly wasn’t writing anything. I didn’t know what to do. He looked up and his face was wet with tears. Embarrassed, I looked away quickly. I felt terrible for him but I knew it was best not to say anything. When I was finished with my work, I let myself out quietly and drove home.

They are back together now, and going ahead with their wedding plans. They both made me listen to “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. They held hands and said that’s going to be played at their wedding. It’s as if nothing ever happened. I hope things last this time.

5. Mandarin Oranges.

There’s a divorced mother who lived in a big house with her two teenage sons. The older son, about 16, lived in the attic. Besides his bedroom, he had his own bathroom and sitting room with a big screen TV. There were blankets out on the roof, so I think he slept out there sometimes.

You never knew what to expect when you went up to his room. He liked to leave “surprises.” He collected expensive basketball shoes, and they were usually out of their boxes and strewn all over the floor, along with all his clothes, which never saw a hanger. One time there were plates with dried up food that must have been there for a long time, because flies and maggots had found a home in the dregs. Another time there were porn magazines under the sheets and a jar of Vaseline (I tried to pretend I didn’t see this). More than once the toilet was clogged but he hardly ever flushed it anyway.

The biggest surprise was the day I opened the toilet lid to find it filled with mandarin orange slices. There must have been 20 or 30 of them in there. For what reason would anyone put mandarin oranges in a toilet? Of course it was clogged. I knew I had to tell his mother, who had just come home. She was pissed. “That’s it,” she snarled. “I don’t ever want you to clean his room again. He’s spoiled rotten, because of his father. That boy needs to learn to clean his own damn room and if his toilet won’t flush because he did something stupid like throw expensive fruit in it, then he needs to fix it himself.”

At least she’s not like this other woman who won’t allow her teenagers to clean their own rooms because “they weren’t raised to have to do that sort of thing.”

6. The Best Reunion Ever.

cat_and_dog

This isn’t really a housekeeping story, but it still belongs here. Several years ago, I was visiting a friend in New Jersey, who worked as a pet-sitter, and I accompanied her on a few of her jobs.

We had to go feed and check up on a cat and dog whose owners had been away for two weeks. They were due back any time. The dog, Eddie, had a tennis ball that was almost destroyed, but Eddie wouldn’t accept any other tennis ball except that one. Not only that, he refused to eat his food until you sank the tennis ball in his food bowl, and then he’d happily eat around the ball, and finally pick up the ball and finish the food under it. It reminded me of the way a kid eats an Oreo. After Eddie and the cat, Missy, were fed, we took turns throwing the ball to Eddie for him to fetch.

It was at that moment the owners pulled in the driveway. Eddie and Missy both ran excitedly to the door, and both started pawing at it. Eddie barked and whimpered and ran around in circles and danced in front of the door.

The owners came in and their pets ran to them like children on Christmas morning. Eddie barked and jumped up and down, and Missy rolled ecstatically on the floor, chirping and coming as close to smiling as I’ve ever seen a cat do.

The owners looked just as thrilled to see them. In all my life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reunion quite like that. The innocent joy and love for their humans those two animals displayed really touched my heart.

Narcissists and cleanliness

Posted on December 6, 2014 by luckyotter

I read an interesting post about Joan Crawford over at Five Hundred Pound Peep’s blog. Crawford was definitely a histrionic malignant narcissist even though most sources say she had BPD (another Cluster B disorder that can mimic and is easily confused with the histrionic form of narcissism). The issue of Crawford’s obsession with cleanliness and order was raised.

There seem to be two kinds of narcissists: those, like my ex, who are complete slobs who refuse to lift a finger around the house and expect everyone else to pick up their mess for them; and those, like my MN mother (and Crawford), who are obsessed with cleanliness and order.

I’m going to talk about the second type.

My mother’s house was like a museum–it was all for show. Even magazines on the coffee table were forbidden because it was “clutter.” Family photos were consigned to bedrooms only because she felt they looked “tacky” in public rooms. She vacuumed, scrubbed, polished and dusted every day, in addition to hiring a weekly housekeeper to keep things spruced up. She invaded boundaries too–every day she came into my room (without knocking of course), and would start straightening up and criticizing my teenage sloppiness. She’d go into my closet and rearrange my clothes, making it hard for me to find what I was looking for (because I had everything in an order that made sense to me). When cooking, she’d wash dishes while she cooked, so there were no dishes inthe sink after dinner (actually, I picked up this habit from her and do it myself).

My mother loved beige, white and eggshell. Everything in the house was in those boring colors, with no bright spots of color to liven things up. I read somewhere once that beige is the devil’s color, not black. I think that person was onto something. I hate beige. It’s the most boring color on the planet. Is it even a color at all?

The glass tables in the living room with their chrome legs and edges were spotless and free of any clutter: what was the point of having tables at all if you weren’t going to put anything on them? The television was tucked inside a cabinet because a visible TV in the living room was gauche and low class and offended my mother’s upper class pretensions.

Even our Christmas tree (after my parents divorced) would be decorated in white lights only, with red and silver balls and bows–no other colors or shapes allowed. She always hated the colored lights, tinsel, and varied ornaments my father bought for our tree when they were still married. Me? I happen to love lots of colored lights. Tacky or not, they seem much more homey and Christmassy to me than the all-white lights you see in offices and banks. Another thing she did after their divorce was refuse to hang any ornaments I had made at school, because again, they were too tacky. My father, though certainly far from perfect, always took pride in my childish little creations, and proudly hung them from our tree, while my mother held her nose in distaste.

When company came over, she became an obsessive basketcase, zooming through the house with the vacuum and duster, and woe to you if you didn’t match her level of obsession and jump in and help out.

But of course, it was all for show, intended to impress. Narcissistic cleanliness is another way they can control everyone around them. I also think it’s an unconscious attempt to hide the “dirtiness” inside them. That’s why they’re so obsessed with it and rage whenever they see dirt or disorder.

I’ve also noticed how many of them (especially women, but some men too) are obsessed with bodily functions. I’ll warn you right now we’re getting into the ick factor here, but I’ll try to spare you too much detail.

I’m acquainted with a narcissistic woman who told me she douches every day. Not just after intercourse or after her period, but every freaking day. I mentioned to her how unhealthy that is and how it can rob her vagina of healthy bacteria that prevents infection, but predictably, she looked at me like I was crazy and said I didn’t know what I was talking about.

I know other narcissists (both men and women) who are obsessed with keeping their bowels clean. They are big fans of enemas, cleansing drinks, diuretics, fasting, and laxatives. They obsess over these things and even talk about their rituals in public, with no sign of embarrassment. If you know someone who goes in for colonic irrigation sessions on a regular basis, and then talks about it to everyone as if they were discussing the weather, it’s a good bet they’re a narcissist. I had a narcissist boss once who made his colon cleansing sessions a regular topic of conversation and would describe the process in the most intricate, intimate detail, even in front of customers. He didn’t care who heard and seemed to want everyone to know about it. The ick factor was off the charts with that one. It made me want to throw up.

They’re also obsessed with their children’s bowel functions. This is a little embarrassing but I’ll talk about it anyway because it’s so typical of the type of abuse (and it is a form of abuse) some children of narcs are forced to put up with.

When I was a child, my mother obsessed over whether I had a daily BM. If I skipped a day, out came the big rust-red rubber enema bag with its snakelike black hose. It was an adult sized contraption and not meant for children, but she’d fill that unholy thing up all the way with soapy water and make me lie down on the bathroom floor on a towel while she shoved that thing into me.

Of course it was extremely painful and my small body wasn’t equipped to hold all that water. If I cried or had an accident, she’d get mad and shove that medieval instrument of torture up me even more and hold my butt cheeks together with her cold hands, her long sharp nails digging into my tender buttocks like thorns from Hell.

It was much worse than the yardstick or any other punishment ever inflicted on me. I developed terrible constipation due to my terror of that thing, but of course that just made the enemas even more necessary and frequent. When it wasn’t in use, that evil device hung on the back of the bathroom door, facing the toilet, like a constant threat of what would happen if I didn’t produce.

You see, I wasn’t a real person, but merely an extension of my mother’s mask of narcissistic perfection, her little baby doll she could do whatever she wanted to with, her mini-me. Like an infant, she couldn’t seem to tell where she ended and I began. She obsessed over my hair, my clothes, my weight. She dressed us in mother/daughter matching outfits. In the morning before school she made me sit at her dresser while she took a hard bristled brush to my fine hair that tended to tangle and form knots. If she couldn’t undo a tangle, she’d angrily yank it out, making me scream in pain while my scalp felt like it was on fire.

Mother-daughter outfits like these were the rage in the ’60s, but were tailor-made (pun intended) for mothers like mine who wanted to make their daughters into their own image.

When I was five, she decided she wanted my fine, straight hair to be curly. So she gave me a home permanent and while rinsing my hair under the kitchen faucet with a glass milk bottle, the bottle accidentally slipped from her soapy hands and broke. A shard of glass buried itself into my forehead, and I had to get stitches. She didn’t try to perm my hair again after that but always complained about how flat it was and insisted on keeping it short.

I never got to choose my own clothes until my teens. Until I started going to Catholic school and had to wear a uniform, she’d lay out the clothing she had chosen for me to wear the night before. Most of the time it was some frilly frock I hated. But if I complained, I was immediately silenced. I wasn’t allowed to be myself, have opinions, or an identity of my own. All she cared about was the image I presented to make her look better in her own mind.

As a teenager, I rebelled by wearing the sloppiest, grungiest clothes I could find, refusing to have my hair cut and styled (even though I really don’t have the type of hair that looks best when it’s too long because it’s so thin), and even gaining weight on purpose just to spite her. I wore a lot of black even though it wouldn’t be fashionable for another few years (I probably would have been a Goth kid had I been a few years younger) because my mother hated black. Part of this was normal teenage rebellion (and in the ’70’s, dressing in unisex, sloppy clothes such as workshirts hanging over beat up jeans was the fashion) but for me it was also a way to say “fuck you” to my mother’s obsession with image at the expense of my growth as an individual.

Obsessive housekeeping and obsession with their own and their children’s bodily functions is another way narcissists can exert control and dominance, as well as a desperate and sad unconscious attempt to hide or try to “clean out” their own spiritual filthiness.