I stay at home and single handedly raise two children on a very tight budget, and I never go out. Never. Unless its daylight and the destination is a supermarket, or work.
He, on the other hand, goes to work all over the country, only coming home at weekends when he has just enough time to support his hobby, hand me his laundry, clutch the remote control and wail about how tired he is.
He is very romantic, however, and is quite lost unless he phones me every single day he's away. After all, what would a man do without a wife to let the tinned meatballs or freezer pizza burn whilst he tells her what an awful day he had at work and how the hotel ruined his cooked breakfast again?
I am needed, so there's lovely. And trust me, this is a doddle compared to recent years when he has been in a job he loathed, coming home every night with, apparently, just enough time to clutch the remote control, wail about how tired he was, and lose his temper over something.
This morning, in this second week of the school summer break, when he just happens to have some time off work and there was no need for any one of us to be semi-conscious until about 9am, I dragged my weary carcass from the pit of our bed at 6.
I did so because the alarm went off,
because the alarm hadn't been silenced the night before,
because last night my husband complained that having a lie in meant he couldnt get a good night's sleep and that he really needed to be up at six in order to feel like he'd achieved something with his day.
Right.
So, at half past six, as he snoozed on, I took the recycling bins to the kerb. The heavy black boxes are collected only once a fortnight, and only if you've practically parked them in the road. I habitually put them out at about midnight the night before when its too late for passers by to have a look at what papers we buy or count the beer bottle or jars from ready-made sauces in the section for glass, however, this time, (because he was there, I suppose) husband had rolled his eyes and grumbled that it was too late and too dark and he'd do it himself in the morning because HE was going to get up early.
OK.....
Whilst I was up pottering around the kitchen at the crack of dawn this morning, washing up last night's cups and filling the water filter, rinsing out the kettle and wiping down the tops and taking all the recycling to the kerb, whilst I was doing that like some sort of sleepwalker, I also emptied the contents of the washing machine into the dryer, and put on another load.
My near-teenage daughter had uncharacteristically blitzed at least part of her room this past week, probably in honour of darling daddy noticing how she reacted to the concept of visible carpet, so what with her miraculous finds and the accumulated contents of her father's suitcase, the laundry basket was full to bursting and this morning, just to see an end to it, I overstuffed the machine with whites and set it on the program for a long wash for a heavy, full load.
Yay for me.
At some point today, after I'd gone on to do an hour of voluntary office work, got ready for my paying job and gone there, after husband had pottered round the garden and then mooched round the shops, he came home and saw all the wet clothes in the machine.
This is how his mind works and why I am ready to walk into the sunset:
1. He automatically assumed, as he hadn't even noticed the machine running that morning, that I must have put the load on yesterday and then left it in the closed machine to fester for a full 24 hours. Because I would, wouldn't I. I mean, rods for my own back? I live to create them. Housework masochist, that's me.
2. He then decided to save the day and earn my undying gratitude by rewashing the lot. .... on the 40 minute quick wash cycle called 'worn once'. Oh yes, daddy-washing-saviour just put 6 kilos of shirts and towels and smalls in with a second whole scoop of soap powder and put it all through a wash programme designed to just about get the soap out of one pair of socks.
3. He pulled it all out, hung it, dried it, and ironed most of it and spread it around the house, never questioning why the tea towels were like folded cardboard by the time he was done. I came home to see him ironing like a pro. All right, so his version of "working his way through the ironing systematically" (quote), involved tipping everything else upside down willy nilly to get to his own shirts first. He'd done the tea towels too, and a couple of pillowcases, but all my towels were still on the line.
Of course they were, otherwise I'd surely have noticed how very firmly the imprint of each peg was embedded in the powder-steeped fabric, and realised much sooner that he'd completely cocked up.
I worked it out at half eleven tonight, when we were both about to go to bed. Daughter's smalls, the towels etc etc felt oily with the residue of soap powder and I had to grab it all and put it back through the machine, immediately, before it was indistinguishable from the other 'cleans' in the airing cupboard etc.
As it is, tonight's re-re-wash seems even more full than the initial load.
Tomorrow I shall get up at 6 again; this time because I have to. I am being picked up at a quarter to 8, I'm going in to someone else's office, will be trying to leg it home for 9 so I can give an hour to some paperwork and email it back to them before I go to my paying work, which tomorrow will include scrubbing out the kitchen palladin bins.
I then have to leg it home, get hold of the woman I'm doing the paperwork for, see if it translated well enoug from my version of publisher to hers, or whether we have to go back to the drawing board, and decide whether I am acting magazine editor this month, or whether she is, before the 4pm cut-off when the publisher needs to know because notices have to go to print and he's going on holiday.
Right now, however, 'he' is fast asleep, in bed. I sent him, and, annoyingly, he went. There are times when someone says to you "Oh just bugger off, will you" that it would be really good to make at least a small pretence of offering to stay and suffer.
He is only 52 and hasn't quite got the hang of that, yet, but I have hopes of him reaching maturity before he draws a pension.
This is me, rattling on and signing off at 1am, almost precisely. The washing machine is merrily doing what washing machines do, except this time it seems to be producing more bubbles and a thicker lather than usual (in fact, come to think of it, I've never seen it create a 'lather' as such, before.)
It seems to be saying it has about another 40 minutes to go.
In order to unwind from an unusually busy several days, I thought I'd watch a little TV Tuesday night. Clicked on the set, then clicked the satellite remote.
Nothing.
Tried resetting the thing.
Nothing.
Figured it was the batteries, so went downstairs to look for fresh batteries. Husband asks, "What's going on?"
"Trying to watch TV, but it appears the batteries in the remote are dead."
"Oh, yeah. I noticed that on Sunday."
"And you didn't change the batteries?"
"Didn't know we had any fresh ones."
"Didn't bother to ask?"
"Figured I'd just surf the Internet instead."
"Instead of putting the remote to rights, for the next person?"
"What?"
"Never mind."
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
"If you're going out, could you pick up batteries?"
"I'm not going out."
"Of course not."
"What?"
"Never mind."
"I think I'll walk the dog."
"Damn straight you'll walk the dog."
"What?"
"Never mind."
He walked the dog and I figured out that the batteries were fine, but that a cable had come loose in the back of the receiver.
Then I watched TV.
For hours.
Because there is no way in hell that the selfish jackass who finds something not working and fails to do anything about it is going to get laid four consecutive nights.
This one hits home. I have two daughters. They are strikingly beautiful, which I take no credit for, since they were adopted. Princess is ten, but could pass for fifteen if you didn’t know how short she is. She wears a size eight pants, but must wear a belt or have her waist taken in. And she thinks she is fat because she is not as skinny as her little sister (who would look anorexic if she were white). If the prettiest girl in the school thinks she is fat, what chance do any of our kids have in this culture?
