With my wife sick, we have a bad case of housework
By Dick Sparrer
It's difficult--and actually somewhat painful--typing this column today, what with my rather severe case of dishpan hands.
The thing is, I'm really pretty pathetic. No, I really am.
But I'm not alone. My two sons are pretty pathetic, too.
How did we come to this dismal conclusion at this late stage of family life? Well, it seems that my wife of 31-plus years was hit pretty hard with an illness that's knocked her down for a couple of weeks now.
And what that means is that, in addition to running up and down the stairs 40 or 50 times a day fetching her ice water and other medicinal supplies, we're stuck with the housework.
It would really be no big deal ... if we'd ever done housework before. We just haven't.
OK, we're not altogether proud of it, but we're just not very domestic. We mow the lawns, pull the weeds, clean the garage and maybe barbecue a steak or some chicken. But housework and any real cooking? Well, my wife usually takes care of that.
So with her on the disabled list, the household tasks were left to three guys with little experience in that arena. It was like our own personal episode of Survivor, but no one was walking away with a million bucks, and I can guarantee you that no one was getting off this island.
In order to survive, we were forced to work together, hoping that the three of us combined could do the household chores my wife usually does by herself. It wasn't going to be pretty. And it certainly wasn't going to be easy.
The oldest is back in the house after four years of college, so he had some experience in the laundry area. He was in charge of washing and drying the clothes.
The teenager's skills are limited at best, so he was introduced to the vacuum and dusting supplies.
Me? I was in charge of the kitchen. I can cook a bit, and I've washed a dish or two in my day. But washing the kitchen floor? Now that was a chore. So I called my friend Skip for some advice.
"Hey, how do you get rid those stubborn stains on the kitchen floor?" I asked.
"How do you what?" he said in disbelief.
"You, know," I said. "When you're washing the kitchen floor ... how do you get rid of those stains?"
"Well, first, I'd call in a cleaning service," he explained, "and, second, since when do you call me for household hints?" He makes a good point. But between the housework and the shopping ... oh, the shopping!
Grocery shopping seems to be a fulltime job in and of itself. I've been to the grocery store more times in the last two weeks than I have in the last two years. It's almost like I'm becoming part of the Safeway family.
After stopping there every night for a week on my way home from work, I took the teenager with me on Saturday to replenish some of the necessities of life--toothpaste, deodorant, Breyer's vanilla ice cream.
"Thank you, Mr. Sparrer," said the clerk when we checked out.
"See, I've been here so much in the past few days," I told the teen, "they know me by name."
"Uh, Dad," he explained, "they knew your name because you gave them your Safeway card. It's on the receipt."
"Oh."
That was just one of the many things we learned over the past couple of weeks:
The teenager learned that socks don't magically knot themselves into a white ball and appear in a dresser drawer; I learned the difference between Cascade dishwasher soap and Dawn concentrated dish liquid the hard way ... with soapsuds cascading out of the dishwasher; and the oldest? He learned that the other two of us would never be able to survive on our own.
So at the end of a long Saturday of chores, I checked in with my wife to see if we were really finished.
"Alright, we've washed the floors, vacuumed the carpet, washed the dishes, dusted the furniture, finished the laundry, done the grocery shopping, started dinner and cleaned the bathrooms," I said. "Is there anything else?"
"When you did the bathrooms," she asked, "did you clean the toilets?"
"Toilets? No one said anything about toilets!" I exclaimed. Hey, there's no toilet cleaning on Survivor!" OK, I'm ready for the Tribal Council to vote me off this island!
Geez, when this is all over, I think we'll have a lot more appreciation for the woman of the family. You know, I think we already do.
|
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
