The Two Dorothys

We made the decision to pull back on our cleaning lady (is "cleaning lady" pc?  Should I be calling her something else?) right after the holidays.  We had a wonderful woman named Dorothy who was uber-energetic and did a pretty good job when she came over every two weeks.  Turns out, all those checks we were giving her were getting squirreled away somewhere.  By the end of the year, she informed us that she was packing her bags and moving home to Poland because she said, "I have a degree in engineering, I can't clean houses for the rest of my life!"  She subsequently sent us her sister - Agnes.  While Agnes was very good, in an effort to save a few bucks each month, we've cut down her to once a month.  The ramifications of that decision are for another post (most notably I am now on latrine duty).

For this particular story, you have to know that my sister also used Dorothy to clean her house.  Having your (now-ex) cleaning lady share the same name as your mother leads to some pretty funny situations.  Like, did I ever tell you time (OF COURSE I DIDN'T!) that I thought my brother-in-law told me after knocking something off of a shelf in their fridge to not worry about the HUGE mess I made because my mom would be coming over tomorrow TO CLEAN IT UP!

Went something like this:

Equation Boy/Man:  "Oh....don't worry about it.  Dorothy will get it."

Me:  "Wha?"

Equation Boy/Man: "Seriously.  Dorothy will be here tomorrow, she'll clean it up."

Me:  "Marc...it is fine.  I don't mind doing it.  I don't want to make my mother..."

Equation Boy/Man:  "What?  Your mother?  Oh..."

.....And it was that very moment that both Marc and I realized that we were talking about 2 different Polish Dorothys.