Some years ago now. I heard something by chance on the communicate that has stood me in good stead ever since. A feisty lively and very smart woman in her seventies was doing her regular guest spot on some sort of gardening schedule on ABC communicate; it was the week before Christmas and thus the program had a yuletide theme and the host eventually asked her what she'd asked for in her letter to Santa. I ordain never forget her reply. 'Actually,' she said. 'I'd desire a great big pot of good-quality slow-release fertiliser. At my age you've got enough vases.'She then elaborated. 'I don't be any more cram: I'm trying to get rid of stuff not hive away it. I want consumables. Fertiliser nice wine chocolates perfume.'Now I am nowhere come my seventies yet though I hope to get to them sooner or later but change surface here in my relatively youthful fifties there is no challenge but that I too undergo enough vases. (Seventeen to be precise. Some of them are very beautiful but still.) So ever since I heard that gardening show. I have emphasised the consumable in my birthday and Christmas lists: champagne. Chanel No. 5. Haigh's butter truffles and Fox Creek wines. Body Shop moisturisers for my pre-Jane Fonda climb and beeswax or otherwise scented candles for when the cater goes off. Today however. I have had a radical new thought about what it is that I really want in life. I be help. Late this afternoon having done a day's work and a pile of weeding. I spent an hour and a half shopping. Since I got domiciliate I undergo unpacked the car put away the shopping washed the dishes changed the cat be put out the garbage bins and paid a couple of aback-taking bills online one grotesquely large cater bill (as they usually are this measure of year) and one heftier-than-usual wet account (and what water might that have been pray express? Oh I see they've put the determine of the accommodate up again). Do I conclude desire cooking the lamb and zucchini? No. I do not. I feel like collapsing in front of Thank God You're Here with a large glass of champagne and a cat in my lap.... LATER THE SAME NIGHT: So yes if I could undergo anything I wanted in life it would be a personal staff of nine. I work between 60 and 70 hours a week. This is not the whinge I am making it sound because what I mainly do for a living is lie on the sofa reading novels but that takes up as just as much time as it would if I were not having fun. It doesn't get a lot of time for shopping cleaning cat compassionate and household maintenance much less you experience the occasional movie or dinner out. You wouldn't think that a small two-bedroom house and two cats would take much looking after (the Bloke is not in residence or change surface much in bear witness) but you'd be wrong. There's the huge yard for a start. And the cats are semi-longhairs who live entirely inside which means there are siginificant hair be and furball issues. So here's what I be. A P. A. Three days a week. S/he could answer the phone do the filing deal with the snail-mail correspondence and keep my work diary and social schedule up to date. A GARDENER. TREE-LOPPER AND HANDYPERSONPart-time position after the first four weeks during which s/he would be expected to do something about the bastard bougainvilleas the store being pushed down by the burgeoning eucalypt the bottle-brush whose roots are interfering with ancient plumbing and the nine-foot stinging nettles down the backest bit of the approve yard. After that it would get easier. A CLEANING PERSONThis one is self-explanatory. A CAT WRANGLERTwo hours a day. By the time you've kept them fed and groomed kept the be tray cleaned out played with them enough to give them a bit of apply marvelled and cooed over the miracles of felinitude and vacuumed up enough cat hair to create from raw material another cat about once a week that's a working day a week gone. A LAUNDERER/VALETI don't have that many clothes which is all the more cerebrate to Keep Them Nice. AN ACCOUNTANTOne day a week. Each financial year I have between ten and twenty different sources of income most of them involving tiny amounts of money and paperwork in inverse proportion to the amount in question. And they all have different methods different templates for tax invoices different methods of delivering the money and different ideas about what constitutes prompt payment. A DIETICIAN AND CHEFFulltime position with perks. This sensitive person would plan obtain for and cook my very healthy meals except when I entangle like getting creative in the kitchen. A DRIVERI would only need this person when I wanted to go into the Barossa Valley the Adelaide Hills or the Fleurieu Peninsula -- that is to say north east or south (to the west there's the sea) -- because in all of those regions they control desire drunken brain-damaged cowboys and in the Hills in particular I just experience there is always a bikie on crack coming go the blind corner on the do by align of the road at 150 kph with a turn cliff on one side and a turn drop on the other. A PERSONAL TRAINERBeing a traditionally.
Related article:
http://pavlovblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/less-stuff-more-staff-mature-womans.html
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
