Venus, my experience of the Russians' perception of distance was completely the opposite - not "(2kilometers is "near")" - but "you need to take a bus - you cannot walk to the subway station, it is too far!". But I did walk every time, to and fro! And only one person, a cross country skier, agreed with me.

So I am back... and with a new plan. I was in several apartments and all were clean.

- bff, because she herself does at least one tidying or laundering task each day
- Lana's, because she has been employing a cleaning lady for the past five years
-Katya's parents', because Katya's mom is extremely particular and Katya helps her with labor-intensive tasks such as mopping the wooden floors in a big three-bdr apartment
-D's, because he cleans and has really weird notions about what I would expect of him in terms of cleanliness. I have big feet (American size 11 - the biggest standard women's size) and he did not have slippers for me. I said I would walk in my socks, no problem. He said that he then needs to MOP HIS FLOORS first. I said that I did not care. I also wanted to say that I would have much preferred that he not smoke in my presence because I DO CARE about that, but decided to be polite and did not say anything (until I got a migraine triggered by second hand smoking).
-my former teacher's because her daughter cleans and she herself cleans.

Nobody lives like me - without doing anything AND without hiring help.

It is so nice when you can invite people over any time without being embarrassed!!! I want to live like that too.

So I decided that that would be my priority. I STILL think it might be a good idea to have a baby, and in fact visiting my girlfriends convinced me that age is not a big deal at all (bff - son at 37 and daughter at 39, Katya, the jazz singer - daughter at 36, Lana - twins at 40, which is not that much younger than I am now, and all do well and all the children are healthy and happy), but there are other issues and for sure I should first take care of living in a decent environment. It is not just that in the current state my apartment is good for cats and only for cats and not fit for a toddler; it is not just because of that. It is that I want to spend the second half of my life living more similarly to how other people live and not being the messiest person around.

Having decided to make it a priority, I recalled how ex used to chastise me for being messy and not having cleaning skills. Well, I am messy and I do not have cleaning skills but I will no longer be ashamed of it. It is just who I am. As I said, I cook and my mother could not cook AND was messy AND had no cleaning skills. So in comparison to her, I have more skills. And I think this is enough progress from one generation to the next. I will let my children make further progress - I will just accept myself for who I am - a messy person without cleaning skills.

That means that I need to hire help. If that is my priority, what will I give up in order to free up money to pay for the cleaners? What I have been able to come up with so far is: manicure/pedicure, marijuana for sleep, and breakfast foods - we have breakfast foods at work so if I get disciplined enough to get to work earlier, I can have free breakfasts. This is probably not enough but it is a good start.

The thought of comparing prices and Yelp reviews of various cleaners did not make me happy so I decided to ask for a recommendation. I knew that Aparna, an Indian female friend of mine and a former colleague, employs cleaners in a STUDIO APARTMENT, because she does not want to spend weekends scrubbing bathtubs. I emailed Aparna. She gave me the phone number of Carmen, a Mexican lady who speaks English and works together with another Mexican lady who only speaks Spanish. I contacted Carmen, explaining that I just need them to clean the kitchen and two bathrooms - the bedrooms and the living room are too cluttered for them to vacuum the floors. And, I said, everything is incredibly dirty. She thought for a moment and said that she would charge me $50 an hour for the joint work of two people for the first cleaning and then will be able to give me a flat rate. I thought that $50 an hour is more than I can afford but still said "yes, please". I made an appointment for the next day. Then, I started removing clutter from the counters in the kitchen (how else would I give her the area to clean?) and quickly realized that I would need more time. I rescheduled for next Wednesday. I plan to spend all weekend removing stuff - both ex' and mine - from the bathrooms and the kitchen in order to clear the space for Carmen and her mate.

So clearly hiring cleaners first CREATES work for me, and only eventually would free me up.

But I am determined to go forth with it and eventually I want to use my clean kitchen in order to do what I LIKE TO DO, that is, cook. There is a therapy for bipolar called "social rhythm therapy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpe...rhythm_therapy) and I will use it via scheduling guests every weekend and cooking at home for them. I actually already have a backlog of invited guests - back in September, I invited all the volunteers from my local cat rescue agency for lunch in November, but did not make good on my promise because in November I was totally consumed by preparing to file the motion to court. So those cat rescuing ladies will be my first guests after Carmen, her helper, and I turn my kitchen into a usable place. Then will be a couple of my former colleagues whom I promised a get-together after I get back (she is from Hong Kong and he is from France - I already had them over once at the old apartment and posted my menu back then). And then, Aparna, my Indian vegetarian friend, whom I promised vegetarian Russian food. And after those promises are fulfilled, sky's the limit.

I think it is a good plan because I will be doing what I LIKE doing - cooking - and will outsource what I HATE doing - cleaning. And not just hate but have no skills for. When I observed my bff effortlessly mopping the floors in a large three bedroom apartment, I thought to myself "this task would seem totally daunting to me; totally beyond my capabilities". And she does it every several days! And vacuuming (I have carpeted floors) - just forget about it. I can mop the tiles in my tiny kitchenette before someone visits but to vacuum two bedrooms and a large living room - ain't going to happen. Just being realistic...

There are also ex' boxes that I will try to move all to the small bedroom until he picks them up in April, as he promised. And, on Monday night I will get the key to my car, which is already in my carport, and that will enable me to load the car with stuff I do not need and drive to Goodwill (a chain of American second-hand stores that accept donations) because freecycling is wonderful but to slow and unreliable for my needs, and does not scale. Some things get a ton of responses and other stay unclaimed. With Goodwill, they take EVERYTHING. That is what I need.

My plan is to just work on getting his boxes in one place and working on having clean bathrooms and kitchen by April. After ex picks up his belongings, I can ask Carmen to clean the small bedroom and then buy furniture for it and then invite my son to visit.

So that is my plan! Thanks for reading! I feel that now that I have committed to it in a written form, I have a better chance to really do what I have planned.