Tuesday, October 28, 2008

My New Year's Resolution

I HATE HOUSEWORK I hate HOUSEWORK I HATE housework

I Hate Housework!!!!!!!!!!!

I love a clean house, but I hate housework. I keep a clean, neat house, but I hate housework. Clean the house today ---------- it needs cleaning again tomorrow. That’s why I hate housework. Housework is never done. Wash the last dish and put it away; ten minutes later someone walks in the kitchen and fixes something to eat. Scrub the bathroom till it sparkles; ten minutes later a man walks in to use the facilities. Vacuum the carpets; ten minutes later the dog walks in with grass on his paws. Make the bed; ten minutes later John and the dog are fighting over who gets to lay down and take a nap. Dust the furniture; and ten minutes later you can see the start of next weeks accumulation. Housework is non productive, un-rewarding, servile, un-compromising, and interminably boring. And that was when I could stand, reach, push, pull, scrub, and walk with abandon.

My sister and I shared a room when we were growing up. Her initials were PAW, and I’m here to tell you that if PAW got her paws on something it was eventually going to find it’s way to the floor. She was so not inclined to apply housework to our shared bedroom that I would be forced to wade through the clutter and clean the room for the both of us. But the minute she got married she became ‘Mrs Perfect Houseworker‘. She dusted twice a week. I mean, the moving everything on the shelves, kind of dusting. She vacuumed every day; every room. She scrubbed and waxed the floors once a week. She scrubbed the water bed mattresses with vinegar and water once a week. There was NEVER a dirty dish to be found, a wet towel in the bathroom, a half a glass of anything sitting anywhere, a dust mote, a scuff mark, a cob web, a bit of lint, or an ash left in the cold fireplace. Her house was so clean that when I knew I was going to visit her at home I felt that I should take a shower before entering her front door.

And you know what happened to her? She went to the doctor because something was driving her crazy. She wasn’t quite certain why she was going crazy, she just knew that she was headed for the Looney Tunes Farm.

The doctor said, “Get out of the house! Get a job! Give up the housework!”

I begged her to take classes with me. I begged her to branch out and meet non houseworking women. I begged her to join a woman’s group with me. I begged her to go find a job. I begged her to let her husband do some of the housework. She demurred on all of my begging. She said that she was mulling over the idea of doing housework for other women; women that hated doing housework.

The doctor had told her to get out of the house and get a job. She thought doing the housework for women that hated housework was the perfect antidote to her impending madness. She had gone completely around the bend! Housework had eaten her brain!

But just in case she was really serious I offered to let her clean my house. You know, just to give her some outside experience.

All of this is just my way of telling you that I knew what housework entailed. I knew what housework could do to a woman’s mind. I knew how insidious housework could be. And that was when I could stand, reach, push, pull, scrub, and walk with abandon.

But now I’m in a wheelchair!.........................Nothing had prepared me for housework from a sitting position!

Vacuuming: A wheelchair doesn’t move easily over carpeting in the first place. Then you add the ‘push-me, pull-you‘; push the wheelchair, pull the vacuum, or pull the wheelchair, push the vacuum. There is the cord that keeps finding it’s way under and around the wheels of the chair, the furniture that the wheelchair keeps bumping into, the furniture that needs to be moved so a vacuum can get under and into hidden areas, and the dog that thinks the vacuum is a mechanical dog eating machine. Vacuuming sucks!!

Dusting: Dusting is a high end task. Dust rests on things that are usually too high to reach from a sitting position. I got one of those looooooong handled duster thingys, but how the heck do I know if it works the dust is too high for me to see it too.

The Kitchen: Everything in the kitchen is either too high or too low. The high cupboards have wonderful things in them that I can only admire because they are too high to reach. The low cupboards have things so far back and low that I fall out of the wheelchair trying to get at them. I can wash the dishes , but I often end up with a wet lap. Water runs down............ when I scrub something it usually runs down my arms, drips off my elbows, and lands in my lap.

The Bathroom: OMG Try to scrub a bathroom from a wheelchair. Once I was scrubbing around the base of the toilet and I reached too far and fell off the chair. I got wedged between the toilet and wall. When the men of the house heard me yelling and saw where I had fallen they assumed I had slipped off the toilet . Instead of running to my aid they had a great time laughing at my indignity. If I hadn’t been such a lady I would have told them to ’piss off’. But you know men in the bathroom! I was afraid they would take me literally.

I HATE HOUSEWORK FROM A WHEELCHAIR

I called my sister the other day. I asked her if she still was thinking about doing housework for women that hate housework. She said , “Oh no, I’ve relaxed a lot. I bought one of those magnetic dusters. I still dust twice a week, but the new duster works so nicely I only have to move things off the shelf once a week. I dust around now!”

Well, if she can dust ‘around’ I can housework around. From now on:

The dog will have to wipe his paws on the door mat before he can come back in the house.

John will have to wear one of those plastic bags your groceries are packed in attached to his belt. It will be appropriately placed to catch all cracker crumbs and chocolate kisses wrappers as they are falling to the floor.

All meals will be eaten from paper plates and plastic utensils that can be thrown in the trash after the food is consumed AND.................................

All men will use the tree out in the backyard


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