couldn't come up with a better title...
After you read this post, say the title outloud; you should sound like Seth and Amy (SNL) except younger and hipper. Maybe you'll sound like my older son who was the first person I ever noticed saying "really". And, yes, I do know that nobody says "really?" like that anymore.
So, during my hubby's vacation
we had this one fight where I lost it (not the fight, my mind). In what I saw as a non-sequiter, he started with the old, "You always complain that I don't do anything around the house."
That was enough to set me off. I don't want to describe my drama queen performance. Actually it was very PG-rated (no violence, nudity or profanity); I just went on and on along these lines: "No es justo", but I did it in the best hysterical operatic tradition of the pre-Stepford wife-robot swap. ha ha ha. I have just a vague recollection of either the movie or the book, so I'm using the comparison because I like it, not because it's valid.
But I digress. Why was I all hysterical about the fairness of it all? Because I had long since basically decided to just live with my hubby's lack of cooperation in the house. He's old enough to retire and collect his social security, but he still has to work to sustain the family - main bread winner and all that. He's also from a different generation and country, which shape his paradigm (although, I don't want to exaggerate this aspect) and, mainly, he just doesn't care much about these things... and that means he doesn't complain about or notice too many home-related things.
So, H does very little around the house... and I accept this arrangement as a logicalish division of labor. Thus, when he says, "You always complain that I don't do anything," how can I respond?
a) "You DON'T do anything, you #%*#@"... would just confirm his complaint and then he would go on and on about how he cooks dinner and takes care of dry-cleaning his work clothes... and he cleans the drain in the bathtub when it fills with hair. I find that discussion so pointless and frustrating because... nevermind.
b) "COMPLAIN??? You don't know the meaning of the word!" ... that's just an impossible argument to settle because the mere act of becoming embroiled in this debate adds to my hubby's impression that I am constantly harping at him.
Sigh - double sigh - So, that day my response was just, "NO! This isn't fair. This wasn't what we were talking about. I wasn't complaining. This isn't fair. This isn't fair! yadda yadda yadda" (Even capital letters wouldn't express my passion at that moment, so I didn't bother - just try to envision it).
But, here's the kicker... the really moment. After my melt-down, I went to the basement, pulled myself together, and quickly came back and apologized, sincerely. So, we went back to the conversation and it stayed very civil. I probably tried to explain some of what I wrote here above. H. had to go back to my supposed blindness to his real contribution to our household and, in spite of how I didn't want to go here, we got back to the topic of our relative contributions. Our conversation ended when he said... are you ready for this?
He said, "Ask how many of your friends' husbands take care of their own laundry?" When I replied something like, "All of them. Trust me... " hubby just kind of let the whole thing drop. I think, in his heart of hearts, he knew what that sounded like.
Now, before you read the title of this post again, it's important to know my husband's definition of "laundry." It means taking one's own work clothes to the dry cleaners and picking them up. (You don't really have to know this next bit, but it does make it a bit funnier: when I asked him to take on his own dry-cleaning about 5 years ago, he was shocked. It was a heavy blow to him and I only got his collaboration by stubbornly sticking to my guns).
