I have finished my Jincy Willett tour, and now I am recommending reading The Writing Class first and Amy Falls Down second. Unless you don’t like mysteries: The Writing Class is a mystery. In which case, Amy Falls Down works on its own completely fine: it only partially cheeses up The Writing Class by letting you know not to suspect a couple of people, but that’s no problem if you’re not going to read The Writing Class anyway. I feel like re-reading Amy Falls Down now that I know some backstory, but you don’t need the backstory to try it.
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I have planted the tulip bulbs. I hate messing with dirt, but it went fairly well except when I saw something out of the corner of my eye and it was a substantial (more compact than some, but also sturdier) daddy-long-legs on my shoulder, just PERCHED there like “Hey.” I practically saw its little chin do the “Hey” lift. In my panic (SOMETHING TINY THAT CANNOT HURT ME IS NEAR MY FACE!!) I first BLEW on it; it flinched down irritably. I then brushed it away with my hand without looking, which is a good way to not have to see your hand touching a spider but is a bad plan in the long run because then you don’t know if you got it and you have to search your entire self multiple times and you still feel like it might be, say, on the back of your collar, or sitting on top of your bun (*compulsively checks back of collar, and then bun*).
Something must have bitten me while I was out there, too, because one ear is itchy and magenta. Let’s say you have it on good authority that that’s what happens if a daddy-long-legs bites you. That should not inspire you to TELL me so. Especially since the daddy-long-legs was on my OTHER shoulder, and I don’t want to imagine it spending that much time on me before I noticed it.
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An interesting part of the menopause book I ended up giving up on and returning to the library right around the time she said it was no accident that the word menopause sounded like “a pause” from “men” was that she said men tend to get more domestic right around the time women are feeling (and here I’ll paraphrase) like they cannot spend one more goddam second with saucepans and washcloths. (It’s no accident that the word washcloth contains the words “ash” and “lot,” “ash” signifying burnout and “lot” signifying what a lot of them we used.) That’s consistent with how things have been going at my house: I feel like I am just absolutely out of the energy it takes to clean something for the hundred thousandth time even though I have plenty of time to do it, and meanwhile Paul has started gardening, canning, and baking bread.
I’m not complaining per se, but I plan to later on when I figure out what it is I want to complain about. It has something to do with his domestic inclinations seeming to lean only toward the impressive (rather than also including cleaning toilets, dusting shelves, or putting away the summer clothes), and something to do with how at this point I would kind of like to start going on adventures but now he wants to stay home and make jam, and something about how nice it would have been to have this kind of domestic participation going on when I was so exhausted and busy with babies. Except I think I would have killed him if he had been fussing around with jam for hours in the kitchen while I was dealing with infants and diapers, whereas now I appreciate having a little space—so again, please stand by while I eat homemade jam on homemade bread and figure out what specifically it is I want to complain about.
Oh, I know the feeling. My complaint-to-be involves my husband’s recent enthusiasm for home improvement.
Yes, Husband’s puttering/nesting means brewing beer. I like beer just fine, but if he’s going to put that much effort into shopping, mixing, cooking, sterilizing and bottling things, why couldn’t it be grocery shopping, making dinners, and canning foods the kids can eat too? Sigh.
Huh. My husband doesn’t seem to be foraying into the kitchen here. WTF. Well, I’d probably kill him if he was puttering around – because you know, men, do they CLEAN UP AFTER COOKING NO THEY DO NOT – the kitchen making a giant mess – I realize not all men think it’s “okay” to leave crusty dishes in the sink overnight, but this might be an issue in my house –
I have totally lost my train of thought here.
It is my understanding that daddy long les’ jaws are too small to open and bite a human. I don’t know where I read that, but the number of them in my basement at any given time requires me to believe it.
It is my understanding that daddy long legs’ jaws are too small to open and bite a human. I don’t know where I read that, but the number of them in my basement at any given time requires me to believe it.
I have also heard this *somewhere*. Let’s just take it as scientific fact. (It’s the only way I’ve been able to manage picking them up by a leg and tossing them all these years.)
Yes! I too have heard that they cannot bite!
My dad took up cooking exactly at the moment the youngest in the family moved out. So on one hand, annoying, he never cooked when it was theoretically harder. On the other hand, he is now retired and my mom comes home from work every day to a home cooked meal. Not sure she can/should complain.
My hubby is super into house projects. I appreciate them, I do. New doors! Painted downstairs trim! Reinforced kitchen floor! but dude if he would just put away a damn load of laundry I’d probably be more grateful (I should note that he does cook with some frequency so I can’t exactly complain complain).
Justin spent TWO WEEKS going through all of our dvds and converting them so we can just click to a menu on the playstation rather than getting off our butts to put in the disk. Which was fine and all, but there were like 327,936 other things where his time would have probably been better spent.
Hah. I love the term “complaint-to-be”, Kate!
I love every word of the spider/menopause sections. EVERY WORD.
“I’m not complaining per se, but I plan to later on when I figure out what it is I want to complain about.” Hahahahahahaha! I look forward, as always, to your figuring it out and then explaining it to us in inimitable Swistle fashion.
This may have been one of the most hilarious posts about marriage that I have ever read. Also, kinda creepy…I mean, are you LIVING at my house? Because it feels like it! Ha!
LOVE your last paragraph. Love it. Had me laughing at loud. You explain things so well, Swistle.
Someone needs to get you a book deal.
Yeah. {{sigh}} I don’t have enough coffee for a witty expression of agreement of your last complaint-to-be but I getcha. I’m often wondering “where the hell were you when we had babies?” That whole time frame is such a blur of exhaustion that it makes me want a nap now.
HAHAHAHAHA: “Except I think I would have killed him if he had been fussing around with jam for hours in the kitchen while I was dealing with infants and diapers…”
As you figure out the specifics, let me tell you a funny story about my husband. When we brought our second child, a girl, home from the hospital, my husband decided at 2AM on the very first night that we got home, that we HAD to have homemade noodles for dinner the next day. So, while I’m up in bed, recovering from a C-section and oh yeah, having a NEWBORN in our room, my husband was down in the kitchen making noodles. While on the one hand I was not happy with the mess that was created or the time of day it was created at, it was also endearing to see my usually stoic husband realize that we had a new baby girl to take care of.
I read something, somewhere, about division of labour corresponding to entropy. Work that leaves you will little to show for it – usually assigned to women. direction of causation? not sure but also not sure it matters.
This totally explains all the housework that I make my husband do! I mean, i cook because there’s something to show for it, and I don’t mind cleaning the bathroom because it looks so shiny afterward, but he is the one who does the laundry and picks up the house and weeds and does all the things that just need to be done over and over. So maybe our relationship is backwards . . .
While my husband isn’t getting more domestic, something weird did happen. We decided we were done having kids and got a puppy. Kids are ages 7 and 5. I got up at night with crying puppy once, on her first night at home. And then slept on the couch next to her crate from 4 to 6 a.m. that same night. The next day my husband was like “OH MY! You must be SO tired. I hope you get a nap. How are you? Here let me get the kids off to school.”
My jaw dropped in appreciation. WOW! Awesome! And then….then I got kinda mad. Because that night? Was EASY. It was a breeze. It was NOTHING compared to all those hellacious nights of breastfeeding crying babies and dealing with sick toddler and breastfeeding baby while other kid is having asthma attack, etc… all at once. That went on for what felt like eternity day after day. And he just slept through all that and asked why I always was napping. He didn’t get why I was cranky and tired. Then. The puppy? Who got me up ONE TIME? And then I could lock in a cage. And NOW I get your sympathy? I mean. I couldn’t exactly be mad at him about that, because hello! Sympathy! And a sanctioned nap. Finally. But….
Where was that guy 7 years ago? And 6 and 5 and 4 and 3 and 2 years ago?
Geez. That came out a bit angrier than I intended. Its just…weird timing.
My father decided to save money by bottling tomatoes when my brother was a baby. Apparently my brother was a baby of the particularly difficult kind and consequently my mother has never forgiven my father. My brother will be 29 in December.
This has been a REVELATION for me! I have a husband who does so much in our house. He cleans, he does so much child & baby care, I have almost never cut children’s fingernails and rarely am I in charge of bathtime. And everyone in the world knows and compliments him on his involved-ness. But there was always some little seed in the back of my mind, and I didn’t know why. A seed of anger, or resentment, or something. And now I know it is the domestic inclinations lean toward the impressive part. And he GETS the accolades for his work, I don’t. Even if I was the best nail cutter in the world no one would care, but his mother goes on and on about how SHE had to do it when her kids were sleeping but just look at her son cutting those baby nails! And sure he does almost all bath times. But I still have to ready the bath and the pajamas, and put everything away. He gets All Time Bather awards from people and no one gives a shit, him included, how the little pile of sleepsack, pjs, fresh diaper magically appeared. I was so stunned by this revelation that I immediately went to go tell him about it.