validate me

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/2DSSXU7

it is the busiest week of my stupid office job which is full of stupid and i hate it and am not fulfilled by it and also it pays me basically minimum wage despite me having been there for fully half of my adult life at this point and yet

AND YET

i have also made dinner every night this week except for monday, out of things we had in the house since we have not gone grocery shopping, and i’ve made good dinner mind you, never the same thing twice, always ready before 7pm except for banjo lesson night when actually it was ready by 7 we just weren’t home yet, thank you instant pot, and i have done three loads of laundry already this weekend even though it is friday evening (one of them has already hung to dry!), and i have moreover made drinks and done yet more dishes, i have done the dishes six times this week.

(Dude has taken the week off, from everything but work, and he’s been home early three days this week, and has spent his time sitting on the couch while i cooked him dinner and made drinks, and that’s his prerogative, he did not ask me to make him dinner, but god damn. Someone just appreciate me for a second please.)

(Also he hasn’t given me his laundry, despite me having begun laundry at 7am today, and I know he’s going to just dump a bunch of stuff into the basket like, just after I do the last load that would naturally accommodate that specific set of garments. (I have already done three out of the six loads I anticipate needing to do this weekend, and I sort pretty specifically, so.) Argh. I don’t mind doing all the household laundry, because I have a sort of OCD-adjacent compulsion about it, but. Come the fuck on.)

I need to be more chill about things. It’s just driving me nuts because I know he won’t begin to touch the mountain of dishes that have been building up despite my sporadic small efforts in between everything else until tomorrow morning approximately two hours after I have become ravenously hungry, whereupon he will spend like an hour and a half to do the pile of dishes, and only then will he contemplate defrosting something to cook it. It will be 2pm before we eat breakfast, and he will not be ready to begin the day afterward until approximately time for bed. 

VALIDATE ME I AM NOT A HOPELESS WRETCH AT HOUSEWORK

also validate my extremely grumpy feelings that if you wanted a housewife you shouldn’t be expecting me to work fulltime outside the home, you motherfucker.

(Also: what a genius am I not to have reproduced? can you imagine if there were kids here too? oh my fucking god.)

Comments

[paean]

I feel you. I’d appreciate the hell out of anyone who made me dinner like that all week after work.

[dragonlady7]

He sat on the couch for most of tonight's process and then came into the kitchen and made us a drink at the end, and then when I set the food on the table in front of him he feigned surprise. "Oh! Wow! Thanks!"
Like he hadn't noticed that I had arrived home after him and immediately begun work in the kitchen. I still had my shoes on and hadn't hung up my coat yet, I had to put it away so I could sit down at the table next to him.

No, he never asked me to do any of it, but if I hadn't done it, he wouldn't have either, and then we'd both have been hungry. So like. If I want to live a civilized life, I have to wait on him hand and foot, basically.

Later I wanted another drink, and said so, and he suggested things and then sat on the couch while I made him one. When I groused mildly about it (couching it as a joke to the cat, of course, because God forbid I face the issue directly, he'll just loudly proclaim himself the worst ever and not speak to me for several hours), he said I didn't have to make him a drink too while I was making myself one. But like. That's not the point? The point was that we both wanted more refreshment and it was his turn to do it? But of course since I haven't directly asked, I'm the villain. (If I'd directly asked, though, there'd've been heavy sighs and much victimization and then the rest of the weekend would have been about his feelings at being asked to do work.)

It took me having a complete breakdown and us just not eating for several weeks to make it his problem, earlier in this relationship. Now it's sliding back, invisibly, toward it being my problem again, and of course he helps out, but like. He lives here full-time, I only live here sometimes. I have had to fight and fight to get him to be in charge of anything, and it's the groceries, and it's a Goddamn Ordeal every week, and I feel horribly guilty every time I send him to the grocery store, but Christ Jesus Almighty, that used to be my job too and if he wants a housewife to take care of him then by God I am not also going to work outside the house.

[rmc28]

VALIDATED omg the fuck yes.

Spouse and I were both on strike for 8 days.

Me: school run as per usual, picket line 5 days out of 8, cancelled the usual after-school care (provided by my sibling but still), did those extra school pickups, took a child to Frozen 2, somehow ended up doing all the laundry every day because I got impatient waiting for extra layers to be clean (see: picket line), cat to vet, Freecycled some stuff, hosted my dad for a day, ordered and wrapped all the gifts including for my in-laws, fed kids as per usual

Him: cooked a couple of times and let sleep cycle drift nocturnal.

And yes, he is managing a disability and mental illness, but I also have shit going on and it is really fucking tiring being the "guess I'd better do it if I want it done" person.

[dragonlady7]

I had wondered, I don't know you deeply enough to keep track but I saw earlier that you were locked out of the house and he was... there but asleep... and was like... how is this... why can he not... let you in the door, like... ???
argh.

it's like. Mine tries, he does! Sometimes. When he thinks of it. Like a hobby. Like his hobby is taking fucking care of himself. And he does it when he feels like it, and feels accomplished, and. Then when he doesn't feel like it he doesn't do it.
Has absolutely zero awareness that for me it is not on the level of a hobby because it is survival and it is a thing that must be done. I feel like we've just slid farther and farther into feral wild animal living in the years we've been together because I kept deciding things like "well I'm not going to be the only one to sweep the floors" and the result is that the floors haven't been swept since then, because I don't even think he fucking knows whether we own a broom. So literally it has been like a decade since I swept all the floors of the house. I've swept the kitchen maybe once in that time. We just wear shoes in the house now, because it's too dirty not to. Do I want to live like that? No! But does he want to live like that? Apparently, to him, it makes no difference, so we might as well.
Literally every single facet of living is that struggle, for me-- do I want to be the only one who cares about this? Do I care that much? The answer is yes, for laundry, and no for almost everything else, it turns out.

Anyway. Medals all around, to us for not breeding, because a child could not live this way.

[rmc28]

Yeah it was just like: if he's sleeping so deeply he doesn't hear the doorbell or me ringing/texting he clearly needs that sleep and what the hell I hardly ever get to take my time shopping the random aisle.

If the cleaner hadn't been coming or the weather was worse I could have made more noise, and/or called one of the people with a spare key but I really didn't want to make someone cross the city to let me in if I didn't need to.

(The random aisle at Aldi is amazing: it updates twice a week with all sorts of things, of varying quality and value, a different theme every time. School uniform! Skiwear! Tools! Pet supplies!)

Anyway: you made dinner every night and that is amazing!

[chamerion]

You are so extremely valid at housework. I got so exhausted by the grind of work/come home/make dinner/dishes that last week I spent all Sunday evening cooking and literally just ate leftovers all week, so you are totally underappreciated for that alone, especially on the busiest week of your job.

[krait]

I stand in awe at your housework prowess!

Personally I have split pea soup in the crockpot and more crockpot plans for tomorrow, but we'll see if that happens.

I also have laundry in the dryer that has been there three days. It's bedsheets. I'm sleeping on a blanket that hasn't been washed yet thrown over the mattress with the other unwashed blanket on top, because getting out the winter sheets and putting the washed summer sheets away is too much work.

I have not vacuumed in probably three weeks. Let's not talk about the last time I mopped.


(I feel your frustration with the unhelpful dude, too; that's the sort of thing that always annoys me just hearing about it! Have you considered making only enough food for one, or only setting out one plate/bowl and putting all the rest of the food away after dishing up your own serving? "Oh, I thought you weren't eating, since you weren't making any effort to produce food whatsoever." Because I grew up with the story of the Little Red Hen: if you don't help make it, you don't help eat it!)