189. Breakthrough

Dear Diary,

Today I hatched a Genius Plan: I’m going to tell The Husband that from now on, he can choose ONE DAY per week to have a clean house. Not one day per week for me to clean the house; no. I should clarify here. One day that the house will be semi-picked-up. But “clean” sounds better, so we’ll go with clean.

Knowing The Husband, he’ll want specifics (he is an Analyst, for goshsakes, that’s what he’s paid to do: dissect information into an unrecognizable pulp of raw data). He’ll most likely say something like, “what’s your definition of ‘clean’?” (but remember, between you and me, what I really meant was semi-picked-up). So then, just to make him happy, I’ll itemize what my new Genius Plan includes:

• Making our bed
• Washing all dishes in the sink and/or near the sink or kitchen vicinity
• Doing all laundry, including putting it away (this should be worth two airline tickets to Tahiti, right there)
• Straightening random junk that happens to be lying around (things like the kids’ drawings, newspaper articles I’ve obsessively saved, take-out menus, and those pesky bills that the mailman religiously brings us)
• That’s it (isn’t that enough? there are only 24 hours in a day)

So, with this fabulous Genius Plan (GP), I will be off the hook from (what other people consider daily) chores a glorious six days per week. Woohoo! Why did I not think of this sooner?

(Even re-reading this makes me seriously question why my third grade teacher, Mrs. Young, opted not to place me in the Gifted Class.)

Here’s the really awesome part: The Husband, instead of being disappointed and disgruntled six days per week, can just EXPECT A MESS and set his exceedingly high standards aside (to give you an idea of his radical demands, he thinks I should rinse out my cup after I use it—I know! how did I marry such an unreasonable person?). Instead, with the new GP in place, he can be deliriously overjoyed on the one special semi-picked-up oops, I mean clean day.

Oh, I hear him walking through the front door right now. I can’t wait to tell him the GP! I’ll report back later how it goes………………

MOV
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Diary,

Predictably, The Husband was not as enamored of the new GP as I was. Bummer. When I explained the system and simply asked him which day he preferred for the “Clean Day” (remember—not cleaning day), he said with notable sarcasm, “Monday through Sunday.” Ha ha, obviously he doesn’t “get” the concept. Then he brought up the fact that he goes to work all day and why can’t I just straighten up the bare minimum amount (his idea of minimum was everything on my itemized list but—gasp!—daily) and then he reminded me that I have three and a half free hours per day when Short is at preschool and what was I doing during that time? (Well, duh: blog.)

The way I look at it is: Tall is almost seven. That is seven long years that I have been doing a billion trillion loads of laundry and dishes and snacks and bottles and and and. I think I deserve three and a half hours to do whatever I deem important (hint: not cleaning). When I say this to him, he says (not unkindly), “Sweetie, we just got that really nice exercise bike and put some expensive free weights in the basement. Why don’t you use some of that time to work-out?”

As you can imagine, his proposed Exercise Plan (EP) went over just about as well as my GP did with him: not very. Is he calling me fat?!? Or is he implying that I am fat?!? I have a mirror that can do that for me, thankyouverymuch, it is not The Husband’s job to reinforce what that damn fun-house mirror already tells me every day (“You’ve gotten a little chub-o there, MOV,”). Duh. I already know that. It’s actually The Husband’s job to murmur helpful and endearing things like, “Everyone knows jeans shrink 3 sizes in the dryer, Honey; you have not put on weight, our dryer is merely set too hot.”

Regrettably, we have scrapped my divine GP as well as The Husband’s less-than-stellar EP. Reluctantly I admit that Mrs. Young might have been right on her assessment of me after all.  So, effective immediately, we return to our previous system that has served us so well these past seven years: chaos.

MOV
("Move Over, Vacuum")