Maid mystery #1

Interesting things are bound to happen when you bring someone into your home to do the job of housekeeping. The chances of interesting things happening increase significantly when you are communicating with that person in writing in a language with which she is fairly unfamiliar. Chances increase even more when you and that person are from relatively different cultures.

People warned me that, because of these linguistic and cultural differences, I was going to come home someday to some kind of surprise. Earlier this week, I went into the bedroom to put away our clean laundry (thank you, Hafida!) and found that I had several new and unfamiliar articles of clothing.

But that wasn't really a surprise nor a mystery. It's easy to figure out how Hafida accidentally brought home someone else's laundry along with our own.

I know, lame visual.

The mystery came yesterday. After Hafida had been here and done some cleaning up and some chopping of carrots and onions for me, I came home and found that she had done everything as I wanted it. And in the fridge in little plastic baggies were half of a tomato and about 7/8 of a lemon.

I have told Hafida to help herself to tea or a piece of fruit or whatever while she's here (the only reason I don't offer her more is that she's only here for a couple of hours at a time). So did she help herself to half a tomato and an eighth of a lemon? Was she hungry for a teeny tiny tomato salad? Doesn't that seem weird?

And what does this say about how bored I am with my life that I really, really want to know about the tomato and lemon?