Every Monday, our maid, Annie, comes to my apartment to do typical maid tasks: clean the dishes I’ve consciously chosen to not do since Wednesday (the logic being “why do dishes if someone else will do them in the next five days?”), clean the bathrooms, clean all of our rooms, and (most importantly) do our laundry. For the first few weeks I was living in the apartment, this process went smoothly; the clothes were clean, dried, ironed, and folded when I got home in the evening. Unfortunately, the temperature has started to drop and Lusaka is apparently trying to destroy the record Seattle set last year for consecutive days of rain (I’m guessing it’s rained 20 of the last 23 days). So, recently, the clothes are either hanging on the dining room chairs partially wet or they are completely soaked and sitting in the wash bucket. Okay, no big deal. I get it. It’s a (sad) fact of nature that wet clothes won’t dry when it’s raining. Not letting this interfere with my high laziness quotient, I’ll just let the clothes dry on the chairs all week or wait for her to return.
So, two Mondays ago, I wasn’t shocked when I arrived home to see the clothes sitting in the wash bucket and an accompanying note that read, “The sunlight has finished and the clothes did not dry.” I’m not going to lie. I made a sarcastic comment to myself about the unnecessity of the note considering I could pretty much have come to that conclusion on my own. I think nothing more of it and start stockpiling dishes and clothes for next week.
Now, this past Monday, I hear her come in around 7:30 a.m. and start to work. I step into the kitchen to say hello before I go to work. She informs me that the clothes detergent is all gone and that she had written us a note. I’m dumbfounded, not remembering such a note, and I go to reread the notepad. It’s at this moment that the phrase “the sunlight has finished” is actually in reference to the name brand of the clothes detergent, Sunlight. Here’s my thing: how can you POSSIBLY combine those two sentences together? I can understand not capitalizing sunlight or not being more specific about sunlight referring to the detergent product, but you’ve got to include a period. That’s grammar 101.
What if this was all just a grand conspiracy? I have this suspicion that (a) she has such a mastery of the English language and (b) such a disdain for doing laundry, that she had spent weeks plotting the semantics behind crafting a note which would be so vague that it was uninterepretable on the first read but still would clear her when it was explained. This, all in a brilliant effort, to avoid doing laundry for that particular Monday. Sounds like the only logical explanation, right? To that, I say, “Well done.”
So, two Mondays ago, I wasn’t shocked when I arrived home to see the clothes sitting in the wash bucket and an accompanying note that read, “The sunlight has finished and the clothes did not dry.” I’m not going to lie. I made a sarcastic comment to myself about the unnecessity of the note considering I could pretty much have come to that conclusion on my own. I think nothing more of it and start stockpiling dishes and clothes for next week.
Now, this past Monday, I hear her come in around 7:30 a.m. and start to work. I step into the kitchen to say hello before I go to work. She informs me that the clothes detergent is all gone and that she had written us a note. I’m dumbfounded, not remembering such a note, and I go to reread the notepad. It’s at this moment that the phrase “the sunlight has finished” is actually in reference to the name brand of the clothes detergent, Sunlight. Here’s my thing: how can you POSSIBLY combine those two sentences together? I can understand not capitalizing sunlight or not being more specific about sunlight referring to the detergent product, but you’ve got to include a period. That’s grammar 101.
What if this was all just a grand conspiracy? I have this suspicion that (a) she has such a mastery of the English language and (b) such a disdain for doing laundry, that she had spent weeks plotting the semantics behind crafting a note which would be so vague that it was uninterepretable on the first read but still would clear her when it was explained. This, all in a brilliant effort, to avoid doing laundry for that particular Monday. Sounds like the only logical explanation, right? To that, I say, “Well done.”
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