Battle of the Sexes
Monday, September 15, 2008
My husband is exceedingly helpful around the house, this is especially true since my appendectomy a few weeks ago. He's cleaned the kitchen, cooked good food for all of us, brought me 7Up and did loads of general tidying. Still, there are a few tasks you will never find him doing.
1. Refilling the pepper grinder.
2. Putting the toilet paper on the holder(we have had standoffs on this and I always lose).
3. Reorganizing any drawer that isn’t in the garage.
4. Hand washing anything.
5. Spraying linen spray on our sheets.
2. Putting the toilet paper on the holder(we have had standoffs on this and I always lose).
3. Reorganizing any drawer that isn’t in the garage.
4. Hand washing anything.
5. Spraying linen spray on our sheets.
6.Ironing our cloth napkins for a dinner party.
Though he did surprise me the other day when he took it upon himself to wash all of the bebe's plastic toys and he threw our 4 year old daughter's stuffed animals in the washer for a good once over.
Likewise, there are certain household/maintenance tasks you will never see me do.
1.Before I got married, I rarely changed my oil, that hasn't changed. Same for any other thing even vaguely connected to the cars, including DMV appointments.
2.This one may shock you but when it comes to extreme biological children's messes, I am a gagging, squealing, cringing mess. I can handle poopy diapers no problem but when my then 3 year old daughter completely shit herself when sick or my 8 year old had the stomach flu, I stood a good distance away offering towels, disinfectant and clean jammies to my husband but never getting too close.
3.Anything technological, even the easy stuff. He's the computer engineer so even when it comes to installing software, I smile and hand it to him. Speakers? Getting the dvd to play? Deciding between DVD and BlueRay? Definitely need the hubs for this.
4.Putting batteries into anything.
5.Spider/rodent removal.
6.Scary noise investigator.
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OMG this made me laugh - my hubs and I have a constant battle over the things he NEVER does, like wash the bathroom rugs or clean UNDER the appliances on the kitchen counter! However, I will never do anything related to the lawn nor will I even touch the TV really. If we ever want to watch a DVD he just does it, and, well, I don't watch anything when he's not around, LOL.
I REFUSE to take out the garbage. Ever. It will sit and pile up before I touch it. It's simply not my job!
Karitag- ok, my hubs never does the rugs but is a maniac about moving all the stuff on the kitchen counters when he cleans the kitchen....about 6 times a year. I'll still watch a movie when he's not here but as I load it into the dvd and click all the menu stuff I get a little mad that he isn't there to do it for me.
cagequeen-
I make my 8 year old take out the garbage, you want to eat in our house, you help out.
My dude is actually much better at cleaning than I am. Organizing and tidying not so much. But actually cleaning? Much better.
so funny. I wish my husband did half that shit. I refuse to change lightbulbs or do anything that can be classified as maintenence out of principle. we have a very traditional division of labor in the house, much to my dismay. (We aren´t divorced because we have a cleaning lady) If that were not the case, I would be all up for learning about maintenence and do-it-yourself shit. But now I´m like "fuck this, I´m not doing that TOO".
I can handle the grossness, but nothing wiggly. I avoid car issues and let the boy take care of that. I always lose at the toilet paper roll thing too.
You lucky. I've never had someone to do anything for me, so I'm my own oil changer/baff cleaner/tech wiz/critter controller. And because I do all that shit myself, I get constant phone calls from other single friends who can't (won't) fucking do them. So it's all, "Rossi? Can you come over and get rid of this mouse/hook up this PS3 that I bought so I could impress dudes with my Rock Band dominance/hold my hair while I baff all over your hardwood floors?"
Sure. Of course.
gypsy-
My husband is a good detail cleaner too, it just doesn't happen very often.
bluestreak-
that's funny, my husband is all about getting a cleaning lady but I figure that's what I have kids for:) Just have to finish training them.
mj-
I am a rock when it comes to tantrums and discipline, even immunizations and holding down and later calming down the kid afterward, I am a cool cucumber in crisis(I freak out after everything's fine). Bt get me near a little barf and I'm a wreck.
rassles-
sounds like me pre-marriage. see after doing all the crap yourself, marriage will seem easier. the bad thing with hubs and kids is shit you do doesn't last. when I was single, I'd clean the house top to bottom and it would stay clean for two weeks, now my house doesn't stay clean for two hours.
What about Smelly Cats
That cat box is now in my purview (pun intended) and although I like our cats -- stinky cat box duty (pun intended) is just nasty business!
Oh Stinky Daddy, you get handsomely rewarded for cat box duty.
I used to clean the litter box, but ever since my 1st pregnancy it became the hubby's job-- I WAS SO HAPPY ABOUT THAT! And I never took that job back, duh.
There were a lot of things I didn't do either when my husband was alive. He was completely in charge of garbage duty. Every Tuesday evening, when I empty all the garbages for Wednesday pick-up I curse him for dying and leaving me that that chore.
Feminists against Palin - shame on you
Phyllis Schlafly
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The nomination of Sarah Palin for vice president is a big step forward for women, but a long backward step for the movement we have been taught to call feminism.
That is obvious from the anguish, indeed the fury, of feminist commentators. They are so intemperate in their criticism that they are incoherent. Men who are clueless about feminism naively think all women should be cheering. Sarah Palin is a woman who has done it all; she has a successful and even more promising career, five children and a supportive husband.
She crashed through the ultimate layer of the feminist fiction -the "glass ceiling" - and she joined those very few women destined to be known only by their first names. What more could any woman want?
The denunciations of Sarah can't be only because she appears to be a conservative Republican, and the feminists want only liberal Democrats to win. In this era of independent voters and respect for a maverick, surely the milk of bipartisanship should soften feminist angst about Sarah.
But, no. Feminist anger against Sarah has exposed the fact that feminism is not about women's success and achievement. If it were, feminists would have been bragging for years about self-made women who are truly remarkable achievers, such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, or former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, or Sen. Elizabeth Dole, or even Margaret Thatcher. Feminists never boast about these women because feminism's basic doctrine is victimology. Feminism preaches that women can never succeed because they are the sorry victims of an oppressive patriarchy. No matter how smart or accomplished a woman may be, she's told that success and happiness are beyond her grasp because institutional sexism and discrimination hold her down.
When Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to get the Democratic nomination for president or vice president, she and her allies rained a torrent of tears all over the media about the injustice of it all, ranting that rampant sexism denied her the nomination she was due. The aging Gloria Steinem opined on CNN that it is "clear that there is profound sexism." She whined that Hillary couldn't crack the "glass ceiling" because there are "still barriers and biases out there."
Oh, the unfairness of it all! Steinem bemoaned that women find it so "difficult to be competent and successful and be liked." Au contraire, Hillary and women like her are not disliked because they are competent and successful, but because they are chip-on-the-shoulder feminists, living in an unhappy world of their own making and spreading their discontent like a virus. Feminists convey a notion of entitlement, as though they deserve special privileges today because of wrongs in past years that no one any longer can remember, such as women not having the right to vote. The bad attitude of victimhood is indoctrinated in students by the bitter feminist faculty in university women's studies courses and even in some law schools. Victimhood is nurtured and exaggerated by feminist organizations using their tactic called "consciousness raising," i.e., retelling horror stories about how badly some women have been treated until small personal annoyances grow into societal grievances. The feminists resent Sarah because she's the exact opposite of Hillary Clinton. When the liberal media sharpened their knives against Sarah, some chivalrous McCainiacs cried foul about media unfairness, but we didn't hear any whining from Sarah. Sarah has been successful because of hard work and perseverance, not because she's a woman, and she's not going to pull any crybaby act now. Sarah didn't need any Equal Rights Amendment, which Hillary is still promoting even though it was declared dead by the Supreme Court 26 years ago.
The feminist tirades against Sarah are mostly so tiresome, but one line of their complaints is really funny. After 40 years of telling wives and mothers to get out of the home (which Betty Friedan called "a comfortable concentration camp"), put their children in day care (tax-funded, of course) and join the workforce, these same feminists now tell Sarah to stay home with her children.
Sarah doesn't need feminist approval for her lifestyle; the only person whose OK she needs for her double career as mother and politician is her husband's, and he seems very happy with Sarah.
Sarah Palin is an exemplar of a successful, can-do woman, and the feminists simply don't know how to deal with her. I hope she will usher in a new era where conventional wisdom recognizes that feminist negativism is ancient history and American women are so fortunate to live in the greatest country on Earth.
Phyllis Schlafly is president of Eagle Forum, an attorney, and the author of 20 books, including "Feminist Fantasies."