Getting Things Done
June 28, 2000
As you get older, you can divide the kids into two groups, those who live near and those who don’t. And the unfortunate truth is that when the Far Aways come home for vacation, it’s a bigger deal than when the Already Heres come for Sunday supper. Also, the arrival of “guests” no matter how closely related, is a good excuse to get my husband moving and get some things done around here before I kill someone.
This time I’ve gone a little overboard. I’ve replaced the carpet, redone the bathroom, re-landscaped the front yard, hired a carpet cleaner, gotten the windows cleaned, contemplated building a new deck, yelled at everybody—often, been to the grocery store four times and the nice bread store twice.
And a big part of this hysteria is the momentum of it all. The single biggest difference between men and women is what they can stand to live with. Men’s entire worldview of the planet revolves around the idea of comfort. If an object feels good, if it’s been in the same place for over a minute, men think it’s born to be there.
They think that there’s some organic growth process that deposits stuff in places it shouldn’t be and that it then becomes a part of nature, and woe betide the woman who wants to change it.
If you move something you’re violating the code, you’re ripping apart the natural order. One of my husband’s most logical, to his sweet little mind, comebacks is “But it’s always been there.”
The problem with men is that their whole relationship with “things” is off-kilter. They go to the store to “rescue” things rather than “select” things. They don’t get that a great deal is not a great deal if it looks horrible, doesn’t fit, doesn’t work and I DON’T WANT IT!
They also can’t throw away and they forget I, the titular homemaker, am the one who is living with the fifteen cans of paint remnants, the four feet of extra chain link fence, the pile of records from his youth, every book he’s ever read, every gift he’s ever been given, and that I’m trying to fit in amongst all these items our camping gear, the bike he’s ridden four times in this life, our winter clothes and the zillion things our married kids think we have room for now that they live in one-bedroom apartments.
To get the lord of the manor to see that the vanity in the kid’s bathroom now looks like a packing crate shipped from a third world country and that the carpet is a biology project not a floor covering, requires going into panic mode. I have to create this kind of emergency mentality if we’re ever going to get anything done. I have to scare him into thinking that I’m going to just die if it doesn’t get done NOW.
I know this is scummy and manipulative—I know it’s bad to tell the kids that I’m creating a fake emergency so that Daddy will do something about getting the house fixed up.
I tell myself that at least I’m not in a snit because he didn’t buy me a mink coat for my birthday. At least I’m not that shallow.
As you get older, you can divide the kids into two groups, those who live near and those who don’t. And the unfortunate truth is that when the Far Aways come home for vacation, it’s a bigger deal than when the Already Heres come for Sunday supper. Also, the arrival of “guests” no matter how closely related, is a good excuse to get my husband moving and get some things done around here before I kill someone.
This time I’ve gone a little overboard. I’ve replaced the carpet, redone the bathroom, re-landscaped the front yard, hired a carpet cleaner, gotten the windows cleaned, contemplated building a new deck, yelled at everybody—often, been to the grocery store four times and the nice bread store twice.
And a big part of this hysteria is the momentum of it all. The single biggest difference between men and women is what they can stand to live with. Men’s entire worldview of the planet revolves around the idea of comfort. If an object feels good, if it’s been in the same place for over a minute, men think it’s born to be there.
They think that there’s some organic growth process that deposits stuff in places it shouldn’t be and that it then becomes a part of nature, and woe betide the woman who wants to change it.
If you move something you’re violating the code, you’re ripping apart the natural order. One of my husband’s most logical, to his sweet little mind, comebacks is “But it’s always been there.”
The problem with men is that their whole relationship with “things” is off-kilter. They go to the store to “rescue” things rather than “select” things. They don’t get that a great deal is not a great deal if it looks horrible, doesn’t fit, doesn’t work and I DON’T WANT IT!
They also can’t throw away and they forget I, the titular homemaker, am the one who is living with the fifteen cans of paint remnants, the four feet of extra chain link fence, the pile of records from his youth, every book he’s ever read, every gift he’s ever been given, and that I’m trying to fit in amongst all these items our camping gear, the bike he’s ridden four times in this life, our winter clothes and the zillion things our married kids think we have room for now that they live in one-bedroom apartments.
To get the lord of the manor to see that the vanity in the kid’s bathroom now looks like a packing crate shipped from a third world country and that the carpet is a biology project not a floor covering, requires going into panic mode. I have to create this kind of emergency mentality if we’re ever going to get anything done. I have to scare him into thinking that I’m going to just die if it doesn’t get done NOW.
I know this is scummy and manipulative—I know it’s bad to tell the kids that I’m creating a fake emergency so that Daddy will do something about getting the house fixed up.
I tell myself that at least I’m not in a snit because he didn’t buy me a mink coat for my birthday. At least I’m not that shallow.
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