It’s the Amazing Technicolor Dirty House

I have decided that I never, ever want to set up house on my own.  I will get rich, employ a housekeeper, hire a chef and find someone to do my hair every morning.  The above all takes too much of my precious time.

However, if I have kids, I don’t plan on getting a nanny.  They’re mine, damnit, and they will love me and no one else.

I digress.

When my mother left for Mexico to look after my grandmother, the implicit agreement with the male contingent of the family was that when Wednesday the 15th rolled around, all my duties and responsibilities concerning the house would now be null and void.  My mother’s very much enunciated directions were that I not sacrifice one moment of my limited time with IP to cater to the whims of the males in the family.  She also asked that they help me out as much as they could leading up to the 15th, but of course that has not happened.

I digress.  This post is supposed to be about events occuring on the 15th or after.  My bad.

When I arrived home from work yesterday, the house was spotless.  I had laboriously cleaned it the night before, all while baking cookies and making my father’s lunch.  (When it comes down to it, I have the makings of a fabulous homemaker, but I didn’t go to school to get the Mrs. degree, you know?  And I didn’t!)  I set about getting ready to leave for the airport; my dear sister had picked up dinner, so I didn’t have to worry about that.  In fact, given that it was the 15th, I technically didn’t have to worry about anything.  Mwahahahaha!

I got ready, left for the airport, picked up said boyfriend.  At around 11:30pm, I headed home.  After walking in, I was greeted by . . .

One hell of a messy kitchen.

I swear my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.  I felt my face freeze into a nasty grimace.  Some part of me began to twitch with impatience, all at 11:45pm.  Part of my homemaker training (as a Mexican daughter, I can’t help but have it) tried to kick in and I made a move to clean up the mess.  I managed to stop myself, my insides screaming "What the fuckety fuck fuck?"

Quite a mood swing.  Up until that moment, I’d been pretty much grinning like the idiot that I can be at times.

I restrained myself from both screaming and cleaning up the mess; if I had, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to bed until well past midnight.  There was cabbage on the counter, the colored sugar from the cookies I had baked was all over the place and it seems as if men have a difficult time loading the dishwasher.  Mustering every ounce of self-control that I had, I turned my back to the mess and went to my room.  After a few minutes of computer maintenance, I went to sleep.

I woke up today greeted by my father.  He of course tried to get military with me by asking me what time I had come home last night, but my parents’ attempts of curfew enforcement stopped working sometime during the Carter Administration (get it?  I was born in 1978, ha!).  After mild discussion concerning what time I got in (which isn’t late, comparatively speaking), he asked what we were having for dinner tonight, suggesting that we should eat the chicken that was left over from the day before.  I cheerfully told him that this wasn’t up to me as I would not be coming home after work.  "What?  Why?" he asked in a cross between dad-like gruffness and the whining that guys sometimes use.  When I answered that I’d be going out with the boyfriend who is typically 1,500 miles away, my father grumbled and pouted.

Arrrrrggggghhhh!

Of course, what complicates this all is that they’re all very good at making me feel guilty.  The whole "you’re abandoning your family and hurting us deeply, can’t you see!?" attitude that really is extreme but that is carried off with a kind of finesse is something I’ve never been able to tune out (or use; I am not a master manipulator).  I actually feel bad that my father will have to fend for himself and my little brother (older brother is currently on his way to Mexico), and that they will have no one there to flip the tortillas and clean up the cabbage.  Then I ask myself what the hell they would do if I were no longer living there?  I doubt they’d go hungry, but the irritation factor would increase tenfold (as would the mess).  I wish I didn’t feel so guilty, but they’re so damn good at making me feel that way.  It doesn’t help that I am not a morning person and that I am less than perky in the morning.  When I am eating my Life cereal, I want nothing more than quiet to reign.  Unfortunately, my father and male siblings jabber on like it’s lunchtime.  I tend to be snippy, and I also feel guilty for being snippy to my father.  He doesn’t deserve it.  Of course, my snippiness factor is steadily increasing to unreasonable levels.  After 12 days of basically no help, I’m getting twitchy.

But my God, how hard is it to clean up cabbage?

The best I can do is go out and get something premade for my father’s lunch tomorrow.  I asked my older brother to put together a lunch for my father today, and of course he didn’t do it.  I watched my father put together a hasty lunch today; I complained that A should’ve done it, my dad snorted and asked me if I seriously expected that he’d do such a thing.

That’s where the difference lies.  They don’t expect it of him.  But they certainly expect it of me.