Domestic Woes

 TWO FACTS: 

In Spanish the word for 'handcuffs' is 'esposa' which is the same word for 'wife.'  Seriously, Spanish?  Sometimes you make it hard for me to like you, like right now and with the verb echar.

I have a flight out of here in 50 days.  FIFTY!?  Yeesh.

But sometimes you make it easy, like when you belong to cultures with manjar.

THE STORY:

It happens every Monday.  Maite (mi mamá chilena) comes into my room in the morning and gets my laundry and changes my sheets.  I am 100% aware that I have no room to complain but here it is: I miss doing my own laundry and changing my own sheets.  I miss washing the dishes while blasting music, cooking and I don't want my room to be vaccumed every day.  I love my Chilean family but Chilean mothers are intense.  If extreme mothering was an Olympic sport, the judges would be fed mashed potatoes into submission.  Cheek pinching, really good hugs after a rough day, telling you you're too skinny and begging you to eat more, holding hands in public (sometimes), these are constant realities of mine right now.  It took some getting used to but now it's just another weird aspect of my chilean life.  But a funny thing has been happening this semester.  I don't have class in the mornings on Monday but it is still laundry day.  So I can either sit on my couch and check fbook again while Maite cleans my room around me (the whole time apologizing for bothering me) or I can help.  I started helping a few weeks ago (by the way, Chile, we wouldn't need to vaccum all the time if we would take off our shoes in the house, wearing them all the time is just barbaric), and she wasn't exactly bothered but I could tell she wasn't exactly pleased, either.  Well once I found out where the sheets are I started just doing it after breakfast and then bringing the basket down to the laundry room myself.  This, this was not okay.  First I just got a friendly talking to, "Erin, that's my job,"  "But Maite, I can help!"  "Haha, don't worry, more empanadas?"  And when I did it again the next week, she didn't say anything.  HA!  I had won, I thought--incorrectly.  The next Monday I woke up, ate breakfast and when I returned to my room, the sheets had been changed, the laundry was out and things were generally tidier.  Sneaky, sneaky lady.  Thus, it began.  I started doing it before breakfast and when she caught onto that, like this past Monday, I went to the bathroom, the bathroom, I had been awake for like, 5 minutes max, and when I got back, there she was, changing the sheets.  I helped.