The lovely, lovely receptionists at work managed to jiggle the schedule around enough that I finished appointments an hour earlier than usual, which meant I got out thirty minutes early. Given that I am usually at work two hours overtime on a shift leading into my days off, this is nothing short of a miracle. Thank goodness for cancellations! I have always been a fan of cancelled appointments because they usually mean a pet is doing better and they also may afford me a little extra time to work my way through a stack of results to report and a message box of phone calls I need to make or return, or reports to sift through and summarize in our medical record. By shortening up my day and blocking off spots wherever possible, they gave me an extra 1.5 hours to do that, and it only ate into my designated lunchbreak by 20 minutes!

On the downside, I did dash out of appointments and desperately put phone conversations on hold multiple times to cough violently - to the point of upchucking twice - but at least the clients seemed sympathetic to my plight. Also, I didn't have to perform five dentals and a cystotomy in one day, like my poor colleague/boss. It may sound like a reasonable workload, but it is absolutely not. My boss put on a game face and half-jokingly (but also half-seriously) discussed how this inspired him to retire early. Honestly if it had been me, I would have been rocking in a corner in the fetal position. That is an absolutely inhumane thing to do to a veterinarian, and it is the reason why I sit there and scrutinize my schedule of appointments and procedures days to weeks in advance so that no one at work has to see me be so pathetic in the face of adversity. Or at least not again. 

In any case, I have three days off to lounge around and do nothing and speak to no one and hope that my immune system is up to the fight. Or at least that was the plan until I remember my best friend, her husband, and their toddler are flying in on Tuesday and will be staying at my apartment while I live off my parents good graces again for a little while. While I'm not the cleanest person ever, I think it's fair to say my cat is responsible for the general state of my living quarters. I am a failed pet-parent in that while my cat adores me, I very much doubt she respects me, and so gets up on my counter tops and scratches my couch and basically trails kitty litter everywhere despite my best attempts to minimize all this. Of course, respect is also a thing that cats probably surrender rarely, if ever. Least of all to their human housemates/servants! So I probably shouldn't expect anything else. Even on a good day, after 10 hours of being at work I'm usually not that inclined to do much more than try to sweep up some of the kitty litter bits scattered around and clean the portion of counter I need, before collapsing in bed. The point being, I am sick and have been even less inclined than usual to clean, and now I have to undertake it while actually still feeling like death warmed over.

So! The solution! My wonderful mother (who insisted that she buy the cough syrup I so desperately need because it's senior day and she gets 20% off!) came by, took one look at me and the state of the apartment, and said "I'm calling the woman who comes to clean our house and seeing if she's available this weekend".

I understand why my mom does it - my dad is a good husband in many ways, but keeping the house clean and organized is not one of them, and she has enough on her plate with my grandma and her job and her various obligations to friends and such. So having someone come in and help her clean every month makes a lot of sense. But it's definitely something I can't justify except in desperate circumstances, which this feels like. I may have a reputation for being a Scrooge amongst my generally penny-pinching family, but at this point in time? The idea sounds pretty amazing! And kind of "bougie", I admit, but who am I to argue in my weakened state? Her estimate of needing 4 hours to clean my 700 square foot apartment seems exorbitant, but also my apartment is a mess and the kind of "deep clean" it needs probably would require at least that much time.

Of course, the fact that I'm immediately letting a toddler and two harried young parents run rampant in here after means I don't actually get to reap the benefits of this, but c'est la vie.