My dirty little secret.

Physical activity has been lacking around these parts, to say the least. The last thing I've wanted to do after logging much time on the bathroom floor is exercise. The act of pushing a vacuum has caused me, more than once, to grab on to the closest available sturdy structure or piece of furniture to keep from falling over - although, that's due more to starvation and dehydration and the consuming blackness that falls over me when I've attempted to stand for a few minutes more than poor exercise habits.

But in the past week and a half I've begun to feel a bit better. Now that I am officially and securely in my second trimester my morning sickness is manageable with medication. Instead of getting sick upwards of ten times a day, if I can get some food in my body immediately in the morning and then keep up with it throughout the day I'll only get sick, maybe, once a day. The nausea is still fairly constant, but like I said it's manageable.

Unfortunately, the damage has been done. It's not easy for a woman of my advanced years (as the medical community would like to label me, being 35 and all) to spring back after almost two months of lying on a couch. It's going to take some time for me to get back my energy, as I was forced to admit to myself after a week of constant activity had left me beaten and exhausted come Sunday.

Okay, "constant" may be a strong word to describe the past week when one of those days entailed little more than caring for a toddler and going to the grocery store. But cut me some slack, 'kay?

My social life has suffered because of my near disabled state. Commitments were either canceled or never made. But worse than anything else, my house has become whatever the step below an official Super Fund sight would be called. It's bad. Or, at least, it was bad until Mr. C took last week off and the two of us (okay, mostly him. Again, still really weak and peakish over here.) tackled some pretty heavy duty house cleaning and de-cluttering.

I wish I could say pride of ownership lit a fire under my husband's ass and prompted me, too, to leave the ass groove in my couch long enough to empty the dishwasher. But no, that's not quite the case. Some pretty hard core nagging got Mr. C's attention and... How do I say this?

We hired a house cleaner and we need the house to be cleaner and more tidy before I let a stranger into my home to do the rest.

There, I said it. We're hiring someone to clean our house. I, a stay at home mom with no job (currently) am hiring another woman to come to my home and clean it for me because I can't keep up with it myself.

Right now my mother is spinning in her grave. The women in her family don't have other people clean their homes. They'd sooner torch the structure and skip town. But somewhere between my mom's generation and mine we lost that housekeeping gene. My sister, whom I love and adore more than any other woman, does not do house cleaning. She's hired cleaners for years and she's only 31. To her defense, she does run a successful restaurant and that takes a hell of a lot of time away from her busy working/shopping/spa/wine tasting schedule, so you can see why she would need to hire someone to keep her house clean.

(Love you, Seester of mine.)

And now, I am hiring someone to vacuum the pet hair and clean my bathrooms. She starts on Friday.

This doesn't mean I won't be doing any house cleaning myself. Keeping up with this place is a full time, seven day a week job (hence the house cleaner). The dogs alone make it necessary to pull out the vacuum every day. And Mr. C was recently promoted, which means a butt load more travel for him and no help on his end for me. Do these sound like hollow excuses to anyone else? Because I don't think my guilt will ever let me get past this.

I will now go back to eating my bon bons while I put my feet up and flip through fashion magazines. Cliche, thy name is Chicky.