My Housewifely Duties

I now know how long I can live in squalor without feeling motivated to do anything about it: 8 months, 4 days. That’s a remarkably long time. When I had the baby, people / magazines / books said just focus on you…and your baby…don’t worry about the house and I was all uh, no kidding because I’m not what you’d call a persnickity home-keeper. I like things to be clean enough so that I don’t feel like I might get sick just from getting out of bed but I’m not going to sit on the couch under a nursing infant and think wow, all the window-cleaning I could be doing. In fact, having a baby was a perfect excuse for me to be even more slovenly.

One thing Saint Aardvark and I have almost always shared over the years is a similar tolerance for clutter. So if, of a Saturday, I would say, Yii, we should really clean up a little, the odds would be good he would agree. Then we would clean for two hours, things would be sparkly and we would congratulate ourselves heartily over several bottles of beer and a Steven Seagal movie. (OK that last part is more recent, as we acquired for Christmas a THREEPACK of Steven Seagal movies and now we are hooked on the eyebrow-furrowed, trench-coat and martial-arts-robe-wearing vigilante with the voice like a steel rod covered in rabbit fur) (What? Stop looking at me like that.) Of course, the baby has altered both our psychic connection (because of the sleep deprivation) and our priorities (I sit around on the couch all the time now; SA only gets to do it on weekends) so this past weekend I planned elaborate tidying in my head but I had no back-up for when my body inevitably chose inertia over movement.

“We should tidy,” I said.
“Mmmm,” he said, “childproofing,” and performed more leet computer tricks using only his left index finger and a snap of the wrist.
“For sure,” I said and ate some ice cream.

Then we went looking for a CD player instead. I will save you all the trouble: there are no CD players to be purchased anymore. It’s over. You probably don’t care because you probably bought a CD player oh, about 10 years ago when they were relevant but I am here to tell you that it is a major pain in the ass to painstakingly build a stereo system over a 10 year period, leave the CD player for last and then not be able to find one (except the 500 disc changer for $700 and how stupid is that?) for love or money.

As Monday dawned, all I wanted in the world was a tidy living room / dining room area (it’s all of a piece and it’s all of a carpet). So when I was given 4 hours of free time (thanks grandparents!) I didn’t go shoe shopping or drinking or to a movie. I came home and vacuumed and re-arranged and dusted. I’m no fool. If the urge to tidy should lurch to the surface of my brain, I grab that pony by the mane and ride it till it collapses, spit foaming from its soft, pony mouth. Steven Seagal has taught me well.