I can. My sister is a cleaning lady (it was supposed to be therapeutical for her).

Rituals are a very important aspect of the comfort zone. Without them you simply can't relax.

Hmm, I can't say I've had that pleasure. What I can say, however, is that I'm related to the village idiot. Although I don't say it very often, for reasons which are, hopefully, understood.

I always feel ashamed when my cleaning lady comes by. I always forget about cleaning up before she comes. Today I will, she'll come tomorrow around 1 pm.
I try to avoid her, but I never can, so I apoligize almost every time. She always says it's oke, but I don't believe her.

Arnon

Excuse me for being so ostensibly off topic. This week's New Yorker has an article by Margaret Talbot ("Duped", about lie-detectors) that will surely interest you:

"(...) To be a good liar, you don't need to know what behaviors really separate liars from truthtellers, but what behaviors people *think* separate them."

I wish I had a cleaning lady.

Mr. Wilde

Do you mean last week's New Yorker maybe?

To Everyone Out There: I'm curious to know who passes this site on a day. Could everyone that does in the next 24 hours please drop a simple 'hello' note on this site? I've always loved the song: "it's a small world after all."

Mr. Grunberg

Last week's New Yorker, indeed. I couldn't help but lie a little.

Noa

Hello?
If you want to make your presence clear, at least say something interesting... I am not sure if the site is really up for such actions, since we did not yet anticipate more than 50 comments per post.

If you want statistics; in june we had almost 10.000 visits and this number seems to double every 3 months.

Hi Sander, no, I wasn't looking to make my presence clear. I'm simply wondering who's out there. 10,000 likeminded people is an interesting figure.
Anyway, I guess the idea has now been vetoed. A pity, I naievely considered calling for a virtual United Nations of some sort (as a counter to model-UN) with Arnon as SG.

Noa

Hi Noa, I was just hoping that anybody commenting here has something more to say than just 'hello'. I like the fact that you called for action. We will try to find someway to facilitate this.

Arnon has been my SG for some time now and with considerabel pleasure. I just wish he stopped whipping me every time he visits Paris.

Innocent

A few months ago someone on this blog said: 'Hi mom.' That was his/her only comment.
I thought that was pretty funny, but I'm not sure if we would like this people in action. Not that I think everyone who doesn't leave comments on this site is a pranker or a no-brainer. (Joking around in a discussion can be lethal to a discussion and is sometimes a demonstration of having no brains or being ignorant.)
Let us consider the 10,000 as innocent bystanders. I guess they like that role.

Our cleaning lady is polish. She's also like family. Because she sees things in our house that only other relatives normally see. We get christmas/easter/etc...cards from her family in Poland. I always wonder wether we are unique in receiving the cards, or that they send them to all of her clients.

"I'm related to the milkman" may be something heard more often.