Snoopin' Shermans

Had a fabulous weekend which I will tell you about in another post when I return from the gym but first I must tell you of a slight dilemma Brian and I have been having.

Brian and I came home last night a little after 11pm last night and the first thing that catches my eye is a cup on the table that I had never seen before. I turn to Brian and ask him "Where did that cup come from?" and he answers "It's probably yours from this morning when you didn't put your drink away as usual."

"But Brian, I don't drink wine."

So Brian finally starts to REALLY look at the cup and realizes that it's not ours and it's filled halfway with white wine. It was placed on the table as if someone had come in, sat down, and had a glass of wine while we were away.

Weird? Yes. But not really.  I am almost certain that it is Brian's landlord who comes down to "check on the place" and I have a feeling that she does it quite often.

Now Brian's landlord is a lovely Brazilian Jewish lady who loves having people over and is constantly treating us to tea and snacks and such. She's in her 70's, a widow, and magnificently rich. She's still very much healthy and active in her daily life. Oftentimes she is away visiting family and friends (She just came back from a month in Europe) but when she's home I get the sense that she's quite lonely. I have coaxed Brian on three occasions to stop by and say hello which Brian accurately predicted would turn into multiple hour long visitation sessions. Even when I tell her that we really need to go and just wanted to ask her how her garden was doing, she somehow convinces us to come in, sit, have a bite of her delicious macaroni and cheese she had just baked. I had borrowed a few books from her before Brian and I had left for our roadtrip and I decided to return them to her on Saturday morning. Brian and I had planned an afternoon of running errands such as grocery shopping and going to the bank before it closed so I figured we had a legitimate way of excusing ourselves quickly. But no. We found ourselves visiting for 3 hours. She had just baked a lunch which we had to sample. Her two granddaughters were over so we had to come in and meet them. To make a long story short, I ended up babysitting and entertaining two very sweet but wild girls (One was an ear biter who tormented Brian quite a bit) while Brian weeded our landlord's 25 feet long flower bed. Yes. Scammed again. Bank closed and groceries were postponed.

Getting back to the main issue -- I had a hunch that our landlord was checking on our place because she would make comments such as "Is the furniture arrangement not suitable downstairs? You guys can move things around down there, just make sure you don't move the bookshelf or the dining set." This being said conveniently after Brian had rearranged the coffee table and sofa seats in order to accommodate more space for when my mother was in town. Or she would say "I think I'm going to have you guys bring up my crystal wine glass set upstairs. They're getting dusty since you guys aren't using them. You only use the water glasses and mugs, right?" Or the most obvious comment being "Brian is so neat and tidy, but you Gina, I don't think so much. Brian is usually so meticulous about the cleanliness of his suite."

Honestly, how could she know all of this when she has never been invited down?!?! And yesterday's piece of evidence just reaffirmed all my suspicions: We're living under a serious Snoopin' Sherman.

I guess it's not really that bad. Brian was just a little more than concerned since we had left the place in disarray that morning so the wine drinker would have witnessed all the clothes on the floor and dirty dishes in the sink. Of course, Brian looked at me accusingly when he said "This place is USUALLY pretty clean and I had just cleaned the place yesterday." I can admit it. I'm not the cleanest person in the world. I have trouble "seeing the mess" that Brian sees but that's why today's mission includes me cleaning up the place before I head over to the gym. I've gotten a bit paranoid about the landlord's sneaky visits and so I'm going to try to have our suite in decent shape before I step out. We exit the suite through the side door but we have to walk around to the front of the house so our landlord can see when we come and go.

It's kind of annoying to know that uninvited guests are coming down for freelance tours of your place while you're away but we've got nothing to hide and maybe once I convince her that there really is nothing to worry about down in our suite, she won't have to snoop anymore! I'm going to convince her with impeccable cleanliness!

So the dilemma is, how the hell am I gonna get our landlord's wine glass back to her without it being totally awkward and obvious about how we know she's been asnoopin'?!?!?!!?!