Yeah, that’s what I’m running around like lately. Despite the feminist nature of my wife, and the irrefutable fact that I hold true that men and women should be treated as equals, I seriously live in the Cleaver household. I go to work, bring the paycheck home each week, and when I come home I sit down in the den watching TV, while Suzy cooks dinner and brings it to me. She then sits with me while we eat, and then she cleans up. It’s not the most 21st-century of partnerships, but she takes care of everything in the house, and I go to work. It works for us, so don’t judge until you take a few minutes to think about how really fair the arrangement is. Suzy doesn’t work outside the home unless she wants to do a show. So her job is to keep the house. I go to work, and pick up a fair amount of work on the side, and in exchange for that I don’t have to clean up shit around the house.
Until my wife gets sick and can’t clean up. So now I’m living like most of my friends do – working a full-time job and cleaning house when I get home each night. And let me tell you, this shit gets old fast. Tonight I have a Honey-do list half a page long just to stay on top of things, and if Bonnie hadn’t stayed with us last weekend I don’t think it would have been possible at all. Having someone to do laundry while I was doing dishes let me get ahead, and I’ve managed to (barely) stay there. So my writing time is pretty limited, because when I get home I’m dealing with feeding the two of us, then cleaning up after dinner, then laundry, then at some point I need to make a run to Target to refill a prescription and pick up a couple of things, then maybe late tonight I can sit still long enough to scribble a little. And I understand that this is how single people, or people with working spouses, live all the time, so I’m not asking for sympathy. It’s just an adjustment for me, and I figure that about the time I get used to this, she’ll be healthy again and things will start to get back to normal.
In unrelated news, check out Jessie Carty’s blog for my video of Gingham, which is available in Returning the Favor. I’ve pretty much decided to wait until I sell down to about 10 copies, then order another 30 copies. They come packaged in 15-copy units, so that just seems to make sense to me. Unless there’s another monthly deal at Lulu that makes it more reasonable to buy more copies. But nothing right now, because I don’t have anything in the immediate future that will put me in a position to sell many copies, and I don’t need to have them sitting on the shelf.
Also, Red Dirt Review submissions are open until Monday, so send me an email with some good stuff in there. Bam Bam and Dr. Chako will both be featured in this inaugural issue, so join the cool kids!
I know exactly where you’re coming from. Three years ago my wife broke her leg and had to be off of her feet for 10 weeks. Count them fuckers…. 10 weeks.
I HATED NURSING…. and developed a whole new respect for the profession.
Ya know, I am amazed at the amount of other couples I am meeting who have the same time of set up my husband and I do! I never wanted to be the stay-at-home-wife but we have found it works really well for us. I can write, take care of the house, run all the errands etc etc etc and K just goes to work. But, I think it works, as an equality thing, because there is never the assumption that it HAS to be this way 🙂
Glad to share your vids and so looking forward to being a part of Red Dirt Review! Hopefully I won’t forget to give you a shout out at the open mike tonight.