Another Day is Housewife Hell

...Twas the Day after Christmas
and all through the house
not a creature was stirring
not even a....

WAIT A MINUTE! THIS creature was all over the house cleaning like Cinderella under the whip of those EVIL step-sisters.

I thought you Addiverse readers might enjoy a few candid photos of my frenzied efforts in Housewife Hell.....after all, some of you might be very entertained by this. Others of you may be motivated to send the wife condolences cards because I am so pitiful at doing these chores.

The first photo shows me doing the one chore I have not enjoyed during Operation Housewife--washing the floor by hands while on my knees. My beloved Lady Chiropractor might have objection to me crawling around on my newly healed knee but there was a floor to wash and knees be damned. As you can see, I believe in the casual look when cleaning. (Why I have my winter wool cap on is a mystery to me. Must have been cold.) If you look closely, you can see Freckles' head (lower portion of the photo, in front of the green bucket). That is because Freckles was staring at me doing this awful task. I crawled my way from the kitchen to the eating area to the entryway to the upstairs bathrooms to the lower room bathroom to the lower level tiled area.

I have to say I do NOT like washing floors. Give me another foot of snow any day.




Once the floors were clean and shiny, I moved on to the laundry. I was already doing laundry--and, I like doing laundry--but, today the wife informed me that it was time to wash all the throw rugs. I must confess that if left to my own devices, I would never once wash a throw rug, so I guess it is for the best that I have now learned this is a necessary part of living life. I didn't even know you COULD wash throw rugs. Forty six years and never once thought about a clean throw rug. Well, at least we now have clean throw rugs on my newly cleaned floors.




Once the throw rugs were in the dryer, I moved on to garbage day efforts. I didn't want to over do it, so I stuck with the garbage and decided to do the recycling later in the day--maybe after midnight. (Maybe next week. We'll see.) We don't usually have so much garbage, but the holidays led to triple volume--three bags instead of one. As it was very slippery out (there was a layer of ice all over the ground), it took me quite a long time to get down and then back up the driveway. At least on the way down, I had the three bags to fall on if I should slip.

Once I safely got back to the garage, I was SURE the recycling would have to wait. The hell if I was going back out there on that ice rink.



Garbage at the curb, it was on to feeding the birds. This didn't sound hard--just a minor pain, as the snow in the back yard is over 18 inches deep. So, I trudged through the snow, enjoying every moment of snow filling my boots, and got to business. All I had to do was fill the thistle seed sock (say that three times fast) with thistle. I didn't have too many traumas--a tree branch kept poking me in the eye and I spilled a whole lot of thistle on the ground and the snow started melting within my boots and trying to take a photo of filling the thistle sock while trying to keep the tree branch out of my eye is really tricky--but, before I knew it,I had my photo, the birds were fed and I was trudging back into the house....

...I stopped and picked up some dog poop on the way back but quickly ran out of little plastic baggies. I also realized I was picking up the neighbor dog's poop and I was not interested in doing any more work than I absolutely needed to do, so I stopped with the poop scoopin' and went back inside.





And then, it was time to do something BIG: it was time to empty the vacuum cleaner canister. This was very nerve-wrecking for the wife as she had visions of vacuum fluff filling the hallways. I knew that I had a handle on this even though I had yet to do this with this particular vacuum. I ripped that puppy right off the machine and dumped that amazing pile of dirty cotton-candy into my newly cleaned garbage bag on my newly cleaned floor. I was the master!





Other efforts for the day included going to the store for the wife to buy a card for her five year old niece (she didn't appreciate my choice as it had glitter on it), micro-waving the wife a dinner (can't exactly call that cooking), spot cleaning the puke under the bed (Lucy threw up twice last night and I really couldn't see to clean it properly last night), straightening up after our guests (Dos Marias!) left (um, cleaning up after two people have sat at your kitchen table talking really doesn't qualify as cleaning--I had to push the chairs in and line up the place mats), trying to fix the DVD player in the living room (problem with the audio wires to the television remain a problem) and I tried to groom the dogs. That didn't go so well as Lucy kept escaping and I finally gave up trying to get her from under the bed because I was just too pooped to fight. There's always tomorrow...

....after I take the recycling out and fluff the pillows and do the laundry and go to the store to buy some needed food products and clean the lint trap, I can always try to groom them again.

Or not. Maybe I'll just take a nap.

The wife? Oh, she's fine. She's practicing standing up straight and trying not to give me too many directions on my chore completion. Right now she's watching Donnie and Marie on Larry King, so you KNOW she's having a good time and is on the mend. She's got no worries--her uterus is gone, her throw rugs are clean, her card is mailed, her garbage is out, the birds are fed, the floors are washed, the laundry is done and the vacuum is ready for more action. Come visit her....

...but, call first and take your dang shoes off when you come in. I just washed the floor and those throw rugs, you know.