June 26, 2008
Momma’s house was always clean. I mean, the vacuum probably needed to be run because we have a cat, and I’m sure the baseboards could have used dusting. In fact, I know they needed dusting, because she asked me for 3 years to crawl around on my hands and knees over the entire house and dust the base boards. Never got done.
I have Thursdays off of work. Monday and Wednesday are my big days, because I’m designing pages. Tuesday, I upload to the internet and start on a few maintance things like designing new fillers. Friday, I build the Shopper cover and upload to the internet and finish up those maintance things. On Thursday, there’s nothing for me to do at work. NOTHING.
Just because I have Thursday’s off, doesn’t mean I’m not working.
I have a bad habit of cleaning the house without asking Alpha Male for help. He’ll be sitting here surfing the internet and I walk out of the office. I’ll come back 30 minutes later. He’ll ask me what I’ve been doing and usually it’s a reply of, “I straightened up the living room, washed and put up the dishes, I’m on my second load of laundry now; the first load is already been put up, got the trash ready to take out.”
I didn’t say that I was going to do that, didn’t even make a peep. Just got up and started cleaning.
I’ve always been told that you keep our house nice, because you never know who’s going to be knock on your front door.
Today, I’ve washed 3 loads of laundry, washed and put up dishes, soaked the shower curtain in a tub full of bleach, bleached my kitchen sink, picked up the living room, got the trash ready to take out, folded up and stored our “junk table”, moved the microwave and snack shelf beside the fridge, cleaned the bathroom, picked up the bedroom, and rearranged my kitchen/dining room.
I’ve always been worried that Alpha Male would secretly resent me or be annoyed by the fact that I get an extra day off during the week. And sometimes I wonder that when I start teaching, he’ll be annoyed that I get out of work before 4 p.m.
But I think that’s one reason why I clean without his help on Thursday’s when he’s not here. He works 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I work 4 days a week until whenever. I might get off at 2 p.m. or I might get off a 5:30.
I’ve always thought that marriage should be an equal partnership. It’s a 50/50 situtation. Not 70/30. If one day, he has to work 2 jobs, then by God, so am I.
But I’ve really got to stop surprising him when he walks in the door with an entire two rooms being rearranged. It’s like coming home to a changed house everyday. I only do it because we’re fairly new in our place and there’s still some boxes that need to be unpacked and some stuff that still needs to move.
I guess it’s because I want to show my shiny, new, fresh out of the wrapper husband that I’m not dependent on him. Well, not to say I’m independent, but that I work my butt off, and I take the initiative and I have drive. I guess it’s because I want him to be married to someone he can be proud of.
I know that washing dishes is nothing to brag about, but it’s the little things that count. I clean his underwear and he kills bugs for me. I rub his neck when it hurts and he takes his shower first in the morning so I can have a few extra minutes of sleep. I give him the piece of pizza that has the most pepperoni’s on it and he opens the car door for me every time.
It’s the little things that make life wonderful.




