Mia and Me
I recently switched from Ana, the illegal Mexican maid who was stealing all my DVD’s and threw away all my goddamn vintage newspapers because she thought they were trash, to Mia, my new awesome Finnish house cleaner. Ok first of all, yeah, I have a fucking house cleaner. Why? Just like Disney movies brainwash girls into the Cinderella syndrome, my mom brainwashed me into not wanting to clean my own goddamn house. So yes, I have a maid. Mia is from Finland and she is tough as nails. Mia herself proclaims, “my people, the Finnish, we are a strong people.” I almost heard her say “unlike you Americans” under her breath. But she is tough and hardworking and mean. She is only about 5’ tall and skinny as hell. She’s old, in her 50’s, but her small body is tough like dried fish. She’s a burned up cigarette of a woman. Industrious, meticulous, and she is a little crazy. And when I say a little crazy I actually mean she’s a lot crazy. First of all she sorts and sets out all the loose change she finds in my house. Well, she pretty much sorts everything. Her English is a little off and she frequently mixes up adjectives and tenses where ‘I am going to clean that table’ becomes ‘I am to cleaning on this table’. She formally requests to sort all my garbage for bottles. “I recycle,” she says, “and every penny counts.” She is constantly cursing under her breath. Sometimes she curses about all my heavy wooden furniture, as she lifts it singlehandedly like a 5’ Finnish terminator, but she mostly swears about dirt and messes. Maybe because Finland is all snowy and white there that she’s never seen an actual mess before, but Mia hates ‘filth’. The thing is that it’s almost not as much upsetting to her that there exists a mess, but more that the last maid (or myself) didn’t already clean it up. I don’t fucking know. Anyway, judge for yourself;
Exhibit A:
I’m tuning a guitar in my living room while Mia cleans in the kitchen. “Look at this!” She barks. I put down my guitar and walk into the kitchen. Her arm is outstretched, a bony finger points crookedly at a splatter on the refrigerator. “Look at this FILTH! … It’s FILTHY!” Her voice is a harsh whisper, like a creature that’s been living in a cave.
Mia, “Did you do this!?”
Me, taken aback, “What? No. Of course not! Well, um, yeah. Ok, yeah, I did do that.”
Mia, “This makes me SICK!”
Me, embarrassed and a little afraid of being yelled at by my cleaning lady, “Huh?”
Mia, her voice an evil gasp, “The other cleaners, they never to clean this things. They leave messes and filth. It’s DISGUSTING!”
Me, “Oh, yeah, the other cleaning lady didn’t clean that. She was pretty lazy. I would have to go around the house and clean all the stuff that she didn’t clean after she left. She wouldn’t even clean inside my microwave. It looked like a WWII battlefield inside there. She stole my DVD’s too.”
Mia, her eyes narrow, her mind somewhere distant for just a moment, “LAZY! It makes me SICK!”
She violently scrubs the splatter off the fridge muttering in Finnish under her breath. Her face hardened into a mask of rage and disgust.
Exhibit B:
I just come back from running a few errands as well as hitting an ATM so I can pay her. As soon as I walk through the door Mia comes up to me, takes the groceries out of my hands, sets them on the kitchen counter, then takes me by the wrist into the bathroom. I am cringing, it was a horrible mess after last weekend and I actually left the house because I didn’t want to hear her cursing while she cleaned it.
Mia, “This room has made me tired. So tired.”
Me, “Yeah, it was pretty dirty.”
Mia, “This toilet, it leaks. I fixed it. I opened this and cut the chain with the pliers. This hard water stains. So much scrubbing. I cleaned it.”
Me, “Wow, yeah Mia, it looks great.” It really did look great.
Mia, pointing to my cactus, “This plant is dead. Let me get rid of this dead plant.”
Me, “That cactus was a housewarming gift from me to myself when I first moved in here.”
Mia, her eyes narrow to tiny slits, “It is dead now.”
Me, “Ok.”
Mia, “I do not want to ask for this, but I need the Tilex. I thought I could SCRUB IT, but I need the Tilex.”
Me, “Yeah, no problem, I’ll just pick some up.”
Mia, aghast, “NO! I will get. My landlord has two bottles, he only needs one. Give him three dollars maybe and he will give to us the Tilex. This is for me to get.”
Me, forking over three dollars, “Ok, here you go.”
Mia, refusing the money, “No no. You pay when I get.”
Me, “Ok, no problem, however you want to do it.”
Mia, “I fixed all the broken tiles with the super glue.”
Me, “Whoa, what super glue?”
Mia, “The super glue from inside the drawer inside the closet.”
Me, wondering why the fuck she was rooting through my drawers and crap and yet thankful that my dirt Nazi actually fixed bathroom tiles, “Badass!”
Mia looks at me judgmentally then releases my arm from her grip, it is red where she was squeezing me.
Exhibit C:
I am on my computer checking out some weird youtube videos and stuff, basically just fucking around. My ipod is plugged into speakers and some badass 80’s music is playing. Mia is on all fours right next to me angrily scrubbing dried stage blood out of the carpet from last Halloween. She is cursing to herself in Finnish, as usual, the only word I can distinguish is ‘filth’. Right now I am convinced that she is actually imagining killing me, or maybe jews. I think she also hates any noise because she is also really complaining a lot about the music. I think it was the music that pushed her over the edge, but she finally snaps.
Mia, “SICK! What is this FILTH!”
Me, “Dried blood. It was from…”
Mia, cutting me off, “Blood is filth, how is blood in this carpet?”
Me, “From Halloween, I was a zombie, it was awesome.”
Mia, “What is this ‘zombie’?”
Me, imitating a zombie, shambling around my living room, “Come on Mia, you know, ‘Arrrrrr Brains! Brains Mia, BRAINS!’”
Mia, “Like the alcoholic.”
Me, laughing, “No no no, like this.”
I load up a zombie video on the internet, play it for her.
Mia, her voice a slow dry gasp, “DISGUSTING! This is the filth for a child. It makes me SICK. No more of this ‘zombies’. No more.”
Me, “Ha ha, ok, no problem Mia.”
Mia, shaking her head indignantly, “No more.”
So as you can see Mia is not your average everyday house cleaner. She is a fucking dirt Nazi and she does chastise me for leaving messes and filth, but let me tell you that she is the most industrious, hard working, and meticulous house cleaner I’ve ever had. The other day she accidentally turned on my video picture frame when she was wiping it down. You know, the kind you plug into the wall and it goes through a slideshow of all your digital photos. Well my house is pretty scary for a Finnish woman, propaganda posters and weird art, lots of heavy wooden furniture for her to complain about, basically a mega-badass bachelor pad. Anyway, my sister and parents and crap started to pop up on the screen and she stood there and watched it (without complaining) for like 5 minutes before she says to me “Family is so important. Family is not the filth. You have a good family.” Well you’re right Mia, thanks, family is not the filth. I heart you too.
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"He [neighbor's "possessed" dog] won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood." - David Berkowitz 
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