Lately I feel like I have been wildly vacillating between being a prepubescent 12-year old girl who is wholly and completely irritated with sloppy, smelly boys and the more mature person that I tend to be who gets wholly and completely irritated with boys in general. And since my household is full of boys, right down to the felines, I am constantly surrounded by testosterone, whether in budding teenage form, an adult male or a couple of wild and woolly cats with their wet dirty feet that smell faintly like old fish. So allow me to rant, wouldja??
Our house is pretty simple, we keep it tidy and try to manage our “piles” and not be too messy. My son has a dust allergy, so it’s for his benefit, but also because it’s much nicer to live in. I normally don’t have much to complain about, the guys do their share, but since I am not working right now, most of the housework falls to me. I am fine with it. We have a rule that no one leaves their stuff lying around; if it’s placed on the stairs, it goes up with you….period. My lovely, divine and God given son, whom I love dearly and with all my heart, could TRIP over a HUGE pile of his discarded__________ (fill in the blank with whatever 12-yr old boys have on them at the moment) that I have strategically placed almost dead center on the steps in front of him and then when I wig out and ask “What is it…..is that pile NOT big enough??” He will calmly say “What!?!?! I didn’t see it!!”
But I could remove one spoonful of ice cream from the container, one SPOONFUL and HE will wig out “WHO ate ALL the ice cream!?!?!?” So now we all know where his priorities lie.
Same child…..it’s after dinner and he is reminded that it is a day with a ‘U’ in it, which automatically puts him on dish duty. He drops on the couch with an exasperated gasp and sigh and says with as much authority as he can muster “Don’t I do enough around here??” My husbands response is drowned out in my shrieking laughter.
Last night he did have a very profound thought as he was emptying the dishwasher yet again; he said “It’s just a never ending cycle of fill, wash, empty…fill, wash, empty.” with an accompanying sigh of endless wisdom and aged experience. I turned to him and calmly said “Well, we could just stop eating, that would fix that problem.” He turned white, and nearly fell off the chair he was standing on. I guess the realization that you can’t have one without the other FINALLY hit him, not like I haven’t tried to get him to that understanding when he quips “Where did all the dishes come from?” after we have consumed a nice, delicious meal.
And that dishwasher is another bane of my humble existence. We have yet another simple rule in the house…..put your dishes in the dishwasher when you are done. My husband, whom I love dearly and with all my heart, is a “They need to soak” kinda guy. Apparently….for a LOOOOONG time. But if the dishwasher has been run, and is full of clean stuff then obviously you can’t put them in, right? Well….we have another rule, that if you open the dishwasher and hear the audible click of the soap dispenser cap snapping back into place you need to get busy and put those clean ones away. My wily guys have devised all manners of subterfuge on this one….stealthily sneaking an arm in and repositioning the cap so that the NEXT one who opens it gets the ‘click’ and you get off scot-free. (of course….we won’t talk about WHO invented this…. lets’s just say nothing about that, shall we??) Of course, then one goes out the door to school, another one heads into his office and gets absobed in his own little cyber world, and logically the task falls to me……me…the only one who can put dishes in the washer, clean up the coffee maker, put away the dishes in the dish rack…..etc…etc and so forth.
Then I go out for my morning walk, and lo and behold…..discover I am the only one who can take the bag of trash from the garage out to the garbage can……AGAIN.
*sigh* Most days I just take this in stride, like the mornings the cat comes in from his morning adventures with wet, dirty feet that need to be swabbed (oh….the indignity!! ) or when Griffin opens the fridge and says “There’s nothing to eat” when it is stuffed to the brim; when the coffeemaker gets cleaned out and ground land all over the dishes that aren’t even supposed to be in the sink (the dishwasher is NOT clean today, guys!! put ‘em away!!) making a big mess etc etc and so forth. Aaaaargh…..am I 12? Yucky boys! Or am I a mom and a wife…..aaaaack….BOYS!! Or am I just (dare I say it??) …..normal???
My wife loves that age for teaching boys
Oh my, the life of a Mom … to boys and men! Looks like they’ve got the spirit, though …
It’s the feeling of making no dent that gets to a woman, I think. I just DID the laundry, and I turn around, and there is a LARGE pile of dirty clothes on the boys’ bedroom floor. Don’t they care that I’m working my fingers to the bone (to the BONE!)?
I spend several hours cleaning the back porch, and the next day it is jammed to the rafters with bikes and skateboards and cowboy boots.
I don’t mind serving my family by doing things that I do well. But when I start to ruminate on the never-ending chores, I can start to get snarky about nobody caring about ME. (Completely untrue, and usually driven by hormonal challenges.)
It’s just as well that there is such tremendous pay-off for having healthy active boys (one big and two small) who really DO love me. But I do draw the line at cooties–they can clean up their own boy-cooties.
Laura
Oh My Goodness. I feel your pain and I only have ONE boy in the house! My husband! I think it is VERY important for women to raise their sons knowing responsibility of household chores, because if they don’t, then their wives pay the price! : ( Tell your son his future wife will be very happy indeed that he did his chores!
i tell him that ALL the time, and he is pretty good about it but hasn’t been very responsive to learning how to cook “you do it so well, why should i bother?”
i tell him it’s because his college roommates will be jealous when he is fixing enchiladas from scratch while they heat their ramen noodles
I will testify that it doesn’t take that long, Kate. We’ve lived here less than a year, but my boys have developed a far-reaching reputation for making their own homemade from scratch pizza. And it’s a reputation that’s drawn some pretty fun attention! In particular, my 15 y/o and one of my 12 y/o are considered the pizza kings already.
But cooking is WAY more rewarding than clean up. At least there are FOUR brothers to share the load at our house! I’ve also found that young teenagers are very capable when it comes to bathroom cleaning. SOMEDAY those daughter in laws are going to rise up and call me blessed!
Barb
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