Desperate Housewife
Since moving in with Alex, I have found that I have serious issues with becoming a "housewife" when I am not actually his wife. It is true that he works 60 or more hours a week, while my hours on the clock are about 35. I get home at 4; he gets home between 10 and 11. I have the two weekend days off, in a row, and he gets Sundays and Tuesdays.
And yet, being the one to clean the bathroom for the third weekend in a row freakin pisses me off.
Even when I lived in my apartment, I had trouble cleaning on a regular basis. My blog entries have chronicled this; my friends and family have witnessed it. Now there are two of us making a mess, joint bills to pay, a dog to take care of, and time and time again, I find myself falling into a wifely role. I do the bulk of the cleaning, I pay the bills, if we are going somewhere, I consider if the dog will need watching and then find someone to do the watching for us.
I am trying so hard not to be a nag, because marriage or not, the nagging is what will truly turn me into a ball and chain. I refuse.
So instead, I do one of the following:
1) I clean and shut up about it.
2) I leave the mess for as long as I can and then start passive aggressively talking about the disgusting state of our house and eventually become so frustrated when he doesn't take the hints, that I end the whole thing in a screechy state of hysterics and tears wherein he becomes so frightened he promises to clean something for godsakes.
I would say that the ratio of the first scenario happening over the second occurs at 3:1, the latter mostly occurring during my PMS week.
And on that note, I have to go clean the kitchen.
And yet, being the one to clean the bathroom for the third weekend in a row freakin pisses me off.
Even when I lived in my apartment, I had trouble cleaning on a regular basis. My blog entries have chronicled this; my friends and family have witnessed it. Now there are two of us making a mess, joint bills to pay, a dog to take care of, and time and time again, I find myself falling into a wifely role. I do the bulk of the cleaning, I pay the bills, if we are going somewhere, I consider if the dog will need watching and then find someone to do the watching for us.
I am trying so hard not to be a nag, because marriage or not, the nagging is what will truly turn me into a ball and chain. I refuse.
So instead, I do one of the following:
1) I clean and shut up about it.
2) I leave the mess for as long as I can and then start passive aggressively talking about the disgusting state of our house and eventually become so frustrated when he doesn't take the hints, that I end the whole thing in a screechy state of hysterics and tears wherein he becomes so frightened he promises to clean something for godsakes.
I would say that the ratio of the first scenario happening over the second occurs at 3:1, the latter mostly occurring during my PMS week.
And on that note, I have to go clean the kitchen.
posted by Jess at 8:14 PM
3 Comments:
oh my dear girl, i feel your pain.
i tried simply lowering my standards, but that just made me depressed.
as you have found out, hinting does not work. as jeuvenile as it sounds, sometimes it's best to just work out an informal "schedule" as it were. however, be prepared to still pick up most of the slack without complaint. to compensate for this, i like to go out and spend his money on me! :)
Jessica, if i knew you in real life, we could go to the bar and cry into our beers about how unfair it is to live with these people who expect us to take care of things that we never thought about before in our entire lives.
I think I might send you an email...
God, I do know you in real life, why haven't we commiserated on this before? And you know that I used to be relatively neat before the Tonester...but there are only so many times I can do something before I give up. There are dirty dishes in the sick and the floors haven't been vacuumed in a very long time, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be doing it for even longer.
So there.
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