Way to go, Meredith...I applaud you for allowing yourself to treat yourself like this...you absolutely deserve it and I celebrate with you your decision to go with it.

Now, I hope you're not like my mother. After Dad died, we had to move Mom into an apartment. Mom was never a good housekeeper. (In fact, I lived my own Cinderella story; being the only girl, it all fell to me...I had to wash all the day's dishes [including pots and pans] for the entire family of 6 by myself almost every night from the year I turned 9 until I left home at 18...unfortunately I am NOT exaggerating! It used to take me about two hours every night!)

Anyway, sorry to digress into that wee pity party there, Meredith! After a couple of months of seeing what Mom would and couldn't do, we decided to get a cleaning lady in to clean Mom's apartment. But Mom insisted on cleaning BEFORE the lady got there, so as not to be embarassed...but what happened is that my brother, hubby and I were the ones who had to do that pre-cleaning cleaning!

In the end we decided it wasn't worth it, cancelled the cleaning service and the three of us did it all. It was a lot of extra work, especially since my job was very stressful and entailed a LOT of overtime, including almost every weekend and callbacks from vacations. A cleaning lady would have life so much easier.

If anything ever happened to hubby (an ex-firefighter who LOVES doing housework and does most of it here, with my blessing ), I wouldn't hesitate to get someone in to help!