Three Coats

In a world of unintentional housewifery, one must continuously find a way to procrastinate and avoid the actual housework. Today, my prescribed housework was supposed to be folding the clothes. Now, I LOVE clothes, I love shopping for clothes, I love skimming through magazines looking at clothes, I love skimming through catalogues dreaming of what I would buy if I had the money, I even try my hand at making my own clothes from time to time. However, I HATE washing, drying and folding clothes. Now, my darling husband and I have worked out several chores that we split into parts, he takes care of one bit, I the other. This is how we handle clothes. Our laundry room is in our basement and currently hard for me to access (long story, another time – another frustrated procrastination based post), so the hubby carries the dirty laundry downstairs, puts through the wash cycle, the dry cycle and then moves all the laundry back upstairs for me to fold. This is a great system that I think is more in my favor than his, but we won’t tell him that. So what is my gripe about laundry, considering it is made so easy for me? The fact that he will go two months with only doing his work clothes and underwear (don’t be grossed, I have enough garments to last two months without cause to launder anything) and will pull straight from the dryer his sartorial needs for the day every morning. That is until he runs out of socks or I ask for my stuff to be washed. Then it is like a marathon. Before I know it, I have twelve, 12!!!!, loads of laundry to fold. Do you have any idea how overwhelming that can be? There are times the clean laundry is dumped on our couch and left to grow and multiply as he just plows through load after load of laundry.

So, after forcing myself to shake, straighten, smooth, and square-off two-dozen tee shirts, I need a break.

There are two baskets of clean laundry in our bedroom, located prominently in front of our closet that is so disorganized and cluttered I can not currently close the doors. 

The hubby has asked me for a week now if today is the day I will fold the clothes and everyday for the last week I found one suitable distraction or another to legitimately postpone or otherwise prevent me from having to do this dreaded chore. Today, I had no easy out, so I had to make one. And I found it in three delicious coats of ‘artist’s sapphire’ blue nail polish. You can not possibly fold clothes with wet nails and to properly manicure one’s nails can take hours from start to finish – finish being three coats of nail polish thoroughly dried and sealed with top coat.

So, our undies may still be forming wrinkles next to his work shirt, lying next to my workout pants, on top of our spring comforter and it may take me an extra shake to de-wrinkle his khakis, but my nails are three coats of exquisitely sapphire blue, the shade of the evening sky just as the first star comes out to play. 

Sink

In the world of icky housekeeping, few things get as gross as a dirty sink. It is actually a HUGE pet peeve of mine to see a dirty sink, but I am married. What does being married have to do with a dirty sink? Everything.
My wonderful, loving husband will cook every now and again, which for most women would be a real treat, right?, well not for me. This is because he uses a different utensil for everything. Peas get their own spoon, so does the boiling pasta, the cream sauce and the sauteed chicken. Sounds kosher, which I (and my colon) would happily tolerate, if he didn't promptly deposit each utensil into the sink after one turn, one flip or one stir, just to pull out a fresh utensil for the next culinary action. So, after one of his escapades around our 36 square foot galley kitchen, I am left with a sink full of dishes. I have had some married girlfriends say they split the dinner time chores, one cooks the other cleans up, but I ALWAYS clean up, whether I stirred the pot or not.
So, sometimes, in disregard of my delicate sensibilities and in spite of myself, I go on sink strike. The dirty dishes seem to multiply at night, like gremlins, with even a single drop of water. Frustrated, I make sweeping and unrealistic declarations like "I am never touching a dish again!" or "I don't care about the trees it will kill or the money it will cost, we are going purely paper plate!" or "We are never cooking again - it is raw fruit and veggies and tuna out of the can for the rest of our lives!". Obviously, I love trees, so I don't even buy paper plates and to never touch a dish is just plain ridiculous and to only eat raw fruit and veggies and tuna would be too healthy a lifestyle to maintain for more than just a few exasperated hours. But, I strike anyway. But what boggles my mind is how the dishes continue to bubble up from the sink when I strike from cooking too! How in holy housekeeping heaven and hell can there be a dirty dish when I haven't cooked in four days?! (Avoiding cooking, by the way, is an art form I will cover another time.)
So, my kitchen sink, the centerpiece in my tiny kitchen has been breeding dirty dishes for a couple of weeks now. I get the sink clean and within minutes it is as though the drain spews forth a used pot or plate with stuck-on cheese from the nachos the hubby made two nights ago. Like the devil himself (or the hubby for the realists) waits, silently and patiently, until I have cleared the sink, then like mission impossible stealthily deposits into the freshly polished stainless steel sink, the dish he hid under the bed because he knows I hate dirty dishes around the house MORE than I hate a dirty sink.
The sink, something I need to complete tasks as mundane as prepare a pot of coffee and as necessary as cleaning our fresh veggies, is perpetually filled with something slimy and smelly and sticky (how can something be slimy and sticky?!?! ewww!!). I admit, I am bad at this housekeeping business, but this just makes everything stink - literally!

I never thought the kitchen sink could be such a thorn in my side.

Dirty Dishes! But its not like I am unfamiliar with the dish soap and sponge - they are there!

Fifteen glorious minutes of a clean sink. Ah, I can happily and easily prepare a dinner in this sink!

Eighteen minutes in - the hubby came home and walked into the kitchen. When he walked out, the sink had spewed again. It never ends.

Contagious

Normally when you think of something contagious you think of a cold or the flu or in funny circumstances, a yawn. (As a self-proclaimed prude (not really) and married woman, we will not enter into the world of STD's in this conversation. Cause, well that's complicated.) Anyway, contagious is as contagious does, I guess. So, like a communicable foot fungus, LAZINESS is catching and it does not. let. go.
This was the weekend celebration of our country's 235th birthday. On Saturday I spent time with my family and my over-exerted and worked-to-the-bone husband came home from work early (his choice to go in at all) and stayed home. On Sunday, I woke at an unspeakable hour for a Sunday morning, truly, 6:30 am on a Sunday should be spent snuggled into a pillow, raced to see my brother and his family before they returned home two and a half hours away and my still-recovering husband stayed home and rested. When I returned from my early morning escapades, he was still in bed. The only justification was that it was still before 11 am on his day off. By 1:30 pm we were up and hungry. So, as always when the hubby gets hungry I start strategizing my way out of standing in front of the stove. I offered to get us a not-fast-food-for-once lunch if he promised to help clean the mess he made. It was a deal. So I came home with his Philly cheese steak purchased no where near Philly to find him, what else, laying on the couch pursuing his obsession. He ate, he drank, he claimed a belly ache climbed back onto the couch, snuggled with the puppies (who are no longer puppies) and they all were snoring within three minutes. So, in such situations I advocate loud noises and bright lights for torturous negotiations. In his brief two minutes of lucidity, we agreed, I would let him relax all day BUT we had to work his last day off. So, here I am 11 pm on the Fourth of July, the day off he got gratis because the federal government shuts down, with a mess in the sink - from where who knows because I haven't cooked in three days, three bags of trash ready to be walked to the dumpster, pants on the floor, shoes at the door and dogs snoring on the sofas and the hubby in bed waiting for the fireworks to end so he can walk the dogs; and I am just too DONE to load the dishwasher.
Happy Birthday, America!