good help is so hard

Josefina is the name of this woman from Michoacan Mexico that Gabriel's friend Jared's entire family uses to clean their houses. Apparently, Josefina is a master of domestic sprucing and she can be had for a song twice a month. I knew when I married Gabriel that utter spotlessness was his norm and he knew that cleanliness was next to godliness and I was most always close to godliness but was prone to lapse into not hanging up the days undirtied clothes immediately when I take them off. We have met somewhere in the middle of the to dust or not to dust spectrum but when Gabriel heard of this Josefina phenom, well, he said, 'where do I sign up'. He told me this after he had talked to her and asked her to come and see our house and meet us and blah blah. So, she's one of those folks that wears elastic waistband pants and a t-shirt and wears nylons underneath all of that for some inexplicable reason but she's pleasant enough and probably just 40ish years old.
As a girl, you don't want some other girl cleaning your house. You especially don't want some girl cleaning your house while she walks around thinking "I'm cleaning this stupid gringa's house and she's an incapable slob because Mexicans know how to clean houses and Erin Sanchez does not." You know that's what she would be thinking. So I stay gone all the live long afternoon on Tuesday, far beyond the point of no return for naps and pleasantness with the toddlers and I walk in to my house, expecting to be greeted by the fresh smell of anti-bacterial spotlessness and need sunglasses to handle the glare of godliness......eh....whatever. So she washed the mirrors and vacuumed the carpet and cleaned the shower (which wasn't even really that clean) and then she left a note "I need soft scrub".....
Oh, YOU NEED SOFT SCRUB? WILL THERE BE ANYTHING ELSE, JOSEFINA WHO WE PAY TO COME AND CLEAN?
the whole thing is a little over the top. Gabriel says, the point is that the vacuuming got done and the mirrors are clean and the tiles are mopped and neither one of us had to do it...he says there are more important things in life than worrying about cleaning the house (since when, I wonder) but my main problem is that when I clean the house, it looks better than when she cleans the house. Is it worth it for a non-perfectionist latina to come and clean my house just so I don't have to do it or should I just do it and be completely satisfied, albeit tired. She doesn't do laundry or fold or iron and she didn't make our beds so we're just talking horizontal surfaces here.
anyway.
Last night was this rehearsal for the tabernacle choir Christmas concert which I found out about at almost 4pm....it started at 5:45. It took me an hour to go 15 minutes down the road and I was late so i was number 58 at yet another audition for this thing. I can't believe this. I am yet to go to one rehearsal where we don't have to have a number and do more things to be more whittled down and more 'chosen'. The first little while was fine. Then the last hour was this toy soldier dance which was like military training meets riverdance and I was still fine. She split us into groups of 8 and, being number 58, it was a lot of groups of 8 go before it was my go. I stood in the back of the stake center gym and did the routine with every single group of 8 before me while the 10th graders in my group gossiped and chatted and didn't practice at all. Then the next practice was starting after ours and all the people for that one were sitting around the walls (about 75 people) and all 75 people from my practice had already finished so they were all standing around too and, right before we're supposed to go, the choreographer says, "oh, Erin, the lines are uneven, can you go to the other side of the gym. Lines were coming in from both directions and I had practiced the entire thing a gajillion times, from MY SIDE! You don't just do this to someone like me. You don't just say, "oh, do you think you could go to the other side and deal with your huge anxiety and inadequacies of being the oldest, fattest, sweatiest, out of shape person in the room and then CHANGE EVERY DIRECTION AND EVERY LEFT TO A RIGHT AND BACK TO A FRONT AND LET'S START.....NOW!!! 5,6,7,8.....
it was a disaster.
I found myself just standing there for 2 hours or 2 seconds completely lost and my mind was swimming and I was a complete disaster...I was a failure.
My therapist used to say that trying something is the most important thing and that failing is part of life and you have to just keep trying but I got my bag and walked out and walked down 2nd avenue and then state street and then south temple and then main street completely weeping. then all the way home on the tracks the same thing. How can it be that I have spent more than 20 years of my life learning this stupid skill and when it comes right down to it I blow? Who am I fooling? No one looks at me and thinks, oh, yeah, her? she's a ballerina....
whatever....I'm a housewife with kids and a mortgage and 6 passenger vehicle and a Mexican housekeeper (who isn't my husband) when I can't afford name brand pancake syrup. One of these days I will have to tell myself that I'm not a dancer....I just can't do that...I just can't say it. All I can do is tell my girls never to get involved with that jerky, abusive man which is ballet....it just treats you like poop and makes you look at yourself in a mirror the whole time and have bruises and pain and you STILL KEEP GOING BACK!
play soccer girls.
play the flute.
play the field.
just don't dance.

I have perspective. At least I have blood cells of both colors. My mom doesn't have white or red or new. She can't go in public or touch anything dirty or she could go from zero to sepsis in 5 hours. Life is fine for me, I just had a weird night.

I'm going to H&M.
Strike up the band.