New Appreciation and New Complaints

Current roles that Char and I have adapted into post-BIG SWITCH, mean that I have been doing more of the household chores than I used to. This has lead to a new admiration for the role that has too often been relegated to stay-at-home-mom’s (ugly term). In my view there are a number of things that women have done around the house and still most often do (even if they work outside the home) that hardly measure on the radar of most common discourse. Here are a few examples…
1. Laundry. With four teenage boys, we are doing laundry once a week. It’s an all day task that if you are not careful with can run into two days. Set the timer on the stove to go off every 45 minutes so you can stay on top of it. Sorting the laundry must require some highly evolved cognitive superstructure that only women are advantaged to possess. I have been instructed numerous times with diligent attention paid and I still have to have all my piles resorted. It’s not as simple as matching colors or fabrics there are a myriad of nuances that can influence the creation of a particular pile or grouping of clothes. I admit freely I am not able to master this skill. As for the drudgery of sorting through people’s dirty stuff? – whatever. No big deal. But seriously ask yourself when was the last time you heard a riveting story about laundry catastrophe or surprising outcome from a sock inadvertently missed in the process of turning it inside out. Write off your day and do the laundry. Oh and to it right ‘cause we all know you can definitely do it wrong. I am betting that if laundry had been in man’s domain there might have been a few more technological advances. I mean the biggest thing that has changed since the day of the washboard is that they have turned the washing tub sideways? Really? And they have allowed you to use less soap? Really? Really?
2. Grocery Shopping. Again do to the Hoover vacuum cleaners at my table every day. Groceries are a weekly excursion. Grocery stores are stupid. It makes no sense to shop the way we do. With all the weaving back and forth between isles only to have the freaking manager decide he is going to change the location of almost everything in the store… If a man built a grocery store to match the fact that he was going shopping. It would be one long building with only one isle and a moving ped walk floor. You would begin with your dry goods and end with the coldest stuff and your cart would take your money when you dropped it off at the kiosk at you had loaded the stuff in your car after the valet had brought it around. Seriously, grocery shopping is messed up. I suspect there is some kind of covenant agreement between the underground women’s league with all grocery store chains to keep these stores laid out the way they are. I understand taking your time with the produce – touch it feel it you know! But listen lady standing in front of the granola bar section and staring at the box in your hand for ten minutes will not make the item cheaper or healthier. Grocery shopping is best understood as a covert military mission. Find your targets, capture and then get the H#$%^ out of there. The super store is not really all that super. It is not a park where you can get your ‘walking’ done.
There you go. I have to say I love my life and the changes that I get to live into but I am starting to wake up to this other part of the world which slowly I am recognizing as alien due mostly to that stinkin’ Y chromosome…