Do: Watch a lot of T.V. because what else is there to do? Dishes and laundry and bills will always be there.
Don’t: Watch a lot of T.V. because it makes you look like a monkey at the zoo learning sign language.
Once upon a time there lived a single woman who could watch “E.R.” every Thursday as her own personal religion and no one said a thing. Then she met a guy, married him willingly, and got sucked away from George Clooney and into the arms unwillingly of Captain Picard from “The Next Generation.” However, David Duchovny from the “X-Files” wasn’t so bad–he was a geeky version of Clooney. When given lemons . . .
I did, however, sneek in a few Hugh Grant movies to help my husband with his guilt after tying me up and taping my eyelids open to force me to watch reruns of “The Twilight Zone” all New Year’s Eve. Jerk. He thinks Hugh stands for all sappy guys who get the hot chick through no fault of their own. He feels there is no point and nothing original about:
1. Goofy British guy runs around town like an idiot.
2. Beautiful, unattainable woman notices goofy guy because of his accent.
3. Accent boy dates hot girl briefly then has sex even though only a half hour of screen time has gone by.
4. Goofy British guy does something stupid.
5. Beautiful, unattainable woman sits around eating ice cream and staring at the phone.
6. They both tell each other what idiots they are and fall in love and kiss and preferably happens in front of the world press.
The end.
My husband has no idea what he’s talking about. I know, because he was once an idiot too. Well, I use the term was loosely. The key here is to find a common ground usually with force in finding shows both husband and wife can watch together without whining. We like cooking shows. It sounds boring, but Gordan Ramsey can be pretty charismatic. “Project Runway” has Heidi Klum/”Die Hard” has Bruce Willis–need I say more?
Most of the time we’re lucky to even see each other and have two seconds to talk let alone watch “The Dark Knight” or “Top Chef,” but as a couple you’ve got to do it. We are part of the television generation since Clooney was on the “Facts Of Life.” So tell the kids to pick up their rooms (even though they won’t) and snuggle up on the couch like a couple of idiots.
Movies don’t make memories, you do.
“Don’t wish for things, let life evolve.” –Julia Roberts (Says the rich, beautiful, unattainable woman. What the hell does she know?)
Do: Clean your house as needed, and feed the pets, and bathe the kids, and decorate until you can no longer feel your arms. For goodness sake employ thoses little rugrats because they can reach into places you can’t, and because they made all the messes in the first place.
Don’t: Ever walk into a room you don’t know how to walk out of.
Like sands in an hourglass, so are the days of our lives. Like a house that needs to be cleaned, it never ends. As a housewife, I am expected to clean. But I wonder: am I still a liberated woman while cleaning the toilet? Will my right to vote be challenged because I consider vacuuming an aerobic exercise? Should I be taken seriously during a political debate because I do dishes and have occasionally scrubbed poop in the bath tub do to a little one’s accident? Well, yeah! Of course! You think President Obama never changed a poopy diaper? Well, probably not, but I’m sure his wife did at some point before they became famous. People still respect her!
I’m tired of feeling like a maid and my husband often reminds me that little fingers are very capable of picking up little Legos, food wrappers, and Barbie shoes. He says, “We all live here, we should all help take care of it.” That may be, but it might be even better if a woman with an umbrella would fly down in front of my house and do it for me.
Enter: Weird characters from T.V.’s past that can get anything done wearing a dress, high heels, red lipstick, and a bottomless bag of Hollywood garage-sale crap. We introduce:
1. Mary Poppins. A wave of her hand and some old-fashioned special effects before “blue” screens were invented and we have a spit-spot room complete with live dolls that clean up themselves.
2. June Cleaver. She’s magic enough with perfect beauty-parlored hair at six in the morning, vacuums in heels, is obviously sexually repressed, and everything is spit-spot by 8 A.M. Maybe it’s her “magic” pearls that makes it look all so easy. Well that and a few vodka-tonics before Ward gets home . . .
3. Alice. She doesn’t really count because she wears orthopedic shoes.
4. Samantha. Witches do seem to get a lot done, don’t they? No wand, but a twitchy nose can turn you into a frog or get Darren out of whatever mess she got him into in the first place.
5. Donna Reed. Perfection at its highest scale. I think she had her own guardian angel, and not that kooky one who can alter space and time just to show her husband that his life is worth living, and that he should fire his uncle immediately for mammoth incompetence.
Sadly, these are not real people. Most of them are even dead. The rest of us must trudge along without a flying umbrella, without a twitch, and without a guardian angel. We deserve a set of real pearls, though. I wouldn’t wear them while mopping, but maybe once I’d give it a try just to see what the fuss is about.
When there’s work to be done, you can also have much fun, just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. No it doesn’t. Cleaning sucks! I stayed home to care for my children because I’m the only one in the world who can do it “the right way.” All mothers think that. After twelve years of being a parent, my back is literally falling apart. Now some one else gets to vacuum. (But they won’t do as good of a job.) Maybe there is justice in a housewife’s world or maybe I just need a valium–spoonful of sugar indeed.
“Just as there are no little people or unimportant lives, there is no insignificant work.” –Elena Bonner