You gotta start somewhere… or so my pal Leona says in her first blog post. The problem here is that the place she’s choosing to start is probably not the place her nice husband is choosing to start. And, according to TW, she’s not going about it in the proper fashion anyway. Let’s take a moment to remember that TW is female and Leona’s husband is ummm obviously male, duh. So what TW thinks about Leona’s inability to help her husband get a clue may be slightly skewed. I doubt it though, because TW is the female version of Leona’s husband – luckily the female version is an improved version and I don’t have much to complain about…
I don’t generally ask anyone to load the dishwasher because people in my household (except the 1/2 kid) generally avoid that appliance like the plague. They are all sure that I have some dishwasher fetish and if they even touch it I will be offended in some manner. I understand where they’ve gotten this idea, (and blame my mother). They’re wrong, but it’s partially my fault that they feel this way – so I generally deal with it. Until TW talks about how good she is about cleaning up her cooking messes. THAT, I take offense to, because she doesn’t clean up in the kitchen more than 2% of the time. That’s ok, I can live with that, but don’t talk about how much kitchen clean up you do. That’s just wrong.
Now the garbage issue that Leona talks about, I’ve got similar experiences. My first issue is that when TW does empty the bathroom or bedroom garbage, she generally makes a bigger mess than if she’d just left it to overflow. So I really don’t complain much when I find myself wandering around and emptying the small trash cans on Monday evening. Better a bit of overflow than the entire can dumped onto the middle of the floor and then a haphazard cleanup. 😉
And then, there’s the kitchen garbage and recycle issue. That’s the one that bugs me the most. If the trash can is full, take it out. Duh. TW doesn’t even attempt to push the garbage down to get more in, she just sets it on top and if it falls out she doesn’t even notice because she’s quickly closed the door and wandered away. If she empties a paper coke carton, she will toss it into the recycle bin next to the trash because “it won’t fit in the trash canâ€. Which means it gets covered in coke goo that I get to deal with because nobody else takes out the recycle bin either.
And then of course, there’s the constant argument about what is actually recyclable. (And I use argument in the loosest sense of the word – we don’t argue about it. I rant, she responds, and I rant some more – all the while laughing at the entire situation. When I stop laughing, then we’re in trouble). She insists that when she lived at “the blue house†coke cartons and cereal boxes and kids school papers were recyclable. Now that may well be but I didn’t live in this town then and I can tell you that according to the note the recycle dude left in our un-emptied bin 2 years ago, those things are not recyclable. And, according to the Big Blue website, the recycle dude is right. That doesn’t stop TW, and thus the small children, from tossing white printer paper and those coke boxes into the recycle bin. Which means I get to sort through it all on Tuesday morning and separate the goo covered non-recyclables from the recyclables. This is not a chore I enjoy. I have no attachment to it. I would like that particular job to end. Preferably, today.
Anyway, back to the real problem –
TW says that if you want something done, then you ought to do it yourself. And if your hubby wants something done, then he ought to do it himself. Now Leona and I know that this just does not work, because she and I want all sorts of things done and we’ve already spent a zillion years of our lives doing them. At some point, your spouse or your s/o should do things that YOU want done, simply because YOU want them done. TW knows this too, she’s just trying to keep us from emasculating her. She gets in these moods every now and then. You just have to roll your eyes and laugh.
TW also says that if I want her to do something, then I have to point it out and ask her to do it. (Which, Leona did, and her dishes sat there and sat there and sat there.) I’ve done it before and found myself more frustrated at having to ask and then having the task go undone than if I’d just said nothing and done it myself. Apparently a specific time table is also required but I have serious problems telling adults that they need to do this job by this time. It should be obvious that the dishes should get done sooner rather than later. And, laundry really should be folded as soon as it is dry or at least as soon as it is pulled from the dryer. Why do I have to spell that sort of thing out to a grown woman? Whatever…
I have really just learned to face facts and so should you, Leona. If your husband doesn’t want to do something, he’s not going to do it. You ought to just accept that and figure out what it is that you don’t want to do – and stop doing it. Let him deal with waiting 24 hours for dinner if you don’t feel like cooking. It works well for me, it might work well for you too – and you create children who learn to find their own food very quickly, without any real problem, while you sit back and watch the adult male flounder around in confusion at not having food appear in front of him.