Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Who Does What At The Craig House




Like any well-run operation, be it a Fortune 500 company, or in this case, your above-average screwed-up household, job delegation is required to keep things running in an orderly, or seemingly orderly, fashion. Everyone has to pull their own weight, do their chores; slackers are not tolerated.

Now, before you read on, I’m gonna warn ya’ that after discovering how helpful Mr. Craig is around the house, many of you are going to want to steal him. And frankly, I’m not going to deny it, he’s a gym. But before you make any rash decisions about claiming him for yourself, I’d like to remind you of the pothole, the plumbing, the Burger King during labor, and the molested by an elephant while hubby laughed his ass off blogs. My point is, with all his good qualities, he’s not without his faults.


Vile Substance Remover:


There was a time hubby tried to initiate the rule of, the person who sees it first, cleans it first. And by “it” I mean anything vile. However, some of you have read my book, Weddings Can Be Murder, which was a romance between a nervous puker and a sympathetic puker. You know how they say we write what we know. Well, I’m not either of those, but I have a terrible gag reflex. I come by it naturally. My daddy would lose his lunch if someone mixed up their mashed potatoes with their peas at the dinner table. Like my dad, the first glimpse of any vile substance, and double that if vile substance has an odor, my gag reflex kicks in.

My gag-impaired issue offers me instant reprieve from cleaning any vile substances. This includes: kitty boxes, hairball removal, and stomach flu clean up. Even cleaning the refrigerator, if said Tupperware bowl has taken up residence longer than it should have behind the milk jug. Junior, unfortunately, took after his mama and grandfather, and is gag-handicapped. Therefore, all vile substance removal is delegated to hubby. It’s not a job he’s particularly happy with, but one he takes upon himself with pride and a bottle of Lysol.

Cook:

I’ve never been territorial about my kitchen. If you wanna cook, you got my blessings. My problem exists when hubby and junior expect moi to eat the half-brained experimental thing they call dinner. Remember my gag reflex issue, guys?

Now, hubby, being a modern man and not afraid to let his feminine side come out to play, has even created a few recipes. One that he’s particularly proud of is his, Ketchuped Chicken. I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing his recipe. It’s rather simple. It’s ingredients include: Oil—lots of oil, chicken—cut up in various sizes to assure some will burn and some will remain raw, and ketchup—lots of ketchup. Preparing it is also fairly simply, heat lots of oil, toss in unevenly chopped chicken. When some pieces have burned sufficiently, while making sure some are still raw, add ketchup—lots of ketchup. The oil and ketchup sort of globs together to create an oily paste and hides all the evidence of the raw meat. Yum. (Remember my gag reflex?)

So needless to say, with exception to mama’s-on-a-deadline-cook-for-yourself nights, moi does most of the cooking.



Kitchen Cleaner:

Now, I’ll have to admit, this is where hubby’s talent really shines—well, right behind his vile substance removing skills. Mama cooks, daddy cleans. Wait, I do have a couple of issues. He claims he cleans the kitchen, I claim he puts the dishes in the dishwasher.

You see, it’s the oddest thing, the man can scoop poop, collect hairballs, and clean up any bodily functions left by our four cats, but he refuses, can not bring himself to touch a dish cloth—which he is certain, is full of germs. He will walk out of a kitchen, deem it clean, and there’ll be enough food on the stove and cabinets to feed another family of three.

So hubby and I share the kitchen cleaning duty.


Bad food detector:

Now, considering both my guys know about my gag weakness, bad food detecting should fall to someone else. But nope. It’s still, “smell this, taste that.” I mostly refuse to comply. Needless to say, there is another bad food detector related issue that is equally disturbing. It’s the ABC bad food detector. i.e. We all went out for dinner. All enjoyed shrimp. Later, one of my men come to me and say, “Ugg, I’m feeling really sick. Do you think it was the shrimp?”

Now, isn’t that a stupid question? If I had thought the shrimp was bad, do they think I’d have eaten it? And now that I know one of them thinks the shrimp was bad, it only makes sense that I’ll start waiting, expecting, and perhaps imagining bad shrimp roiling around in my stomach. (Remember my gag issue?) Ahh, but bad food detecting continues to be my job.

Clothes Checker and Sniffer:

Now, I’m not talking laundry here. Nope, laundry in the Craig house is every man for himself. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but my hubby and son do their own clothes. (I personally believe it is to keep me from blogging about the condition of their underwear.) I’ll even confess and tell you that my hubby, not son, is better about washing, drying and putting away than moi. Me, I’ll wash, I’ll dry, and that laundry basket can stay filled with clothes for a week—or until I wear them.

Nevertheless, duty of Clothes Checker and Sniffer is not laundry. This is where the man says, “Hey, smell this, is it still clean enough to wear?” Now, I personally think this is one of the huge differences in the genders and I think someone pointed this one out in my rule blog. But if a woman thinks there might even be a chance that an article of clothing smells, she will not adorn herself in such clothing. Now, my men, if their toes do not curl, if mama’s gag reflexes don’t act up when the piece of clothing is forcibly placed under my nose, then they proudly wear it.

The clothes “checking” part of this job is also allocated to moi. Now, I’ve been told by hubby that while it remains my job, I have not excelled in this duty. According to him, I have allowed him to go to work with holes in his shirt, buttons fastened unevenly, and the worse crime happened just a few weeks ago. He wore one black and one brown shoe to work.

In my defense, he leaves for work before I have sucked down my required five cups of cinnamon stick coffee. Needless to say, I’m working on improving on this duty.


Okay, I have loads more job allocations, from snake catcher and bug identifier, to fever checker, but I’ll save them for next week’s blog. But what about your guys? Who does what at your house? What household chore do you hate? Love? Come on, share a little.

19 comments:

Heather Webber said...

Personally, if the fridge item is in question, the mere thought of food poisoning sends it straight to the trash!

Me? I hate cleaning the stovetop. Last year we upgraded our stove to one with a glass top. Never. Again. It's so high maintenance it hardly gets cleaned other than a quick swipe with a damp cloth.

My husband does ALL the laundry in the house--and actually likes to do it. Which is just fine by me.

Oh, and Febreze works wonders on funky clothes...

Donna Marie Rogers said...

Ketchuped Chicken...LMAO!

Ah, Christie, thank you so much for the morning chuckle. My husband manages to piss me off pretty much every morning before I've even rolled out of bed, so I needed it. Today he started whining, loudly, about having to fill the sugar shaker. I mean, are you fricken kidding me? With all the crap jobs I have to do each day, he gets heated over having to unscrew the cap off the sugar shaker? *growl*

As for clothing, our men couldn't be more opposite. If his socks match, it's a durn miracle. Just last week I bought him three new pocket Tees and threw away an old one. I swear, I heard about that old fricken shirt all fricken day. "It was my favorite work shirt! It kept me cool!" That's because it was more holes than shirt!

He does do alot of the laundry (Though I do most of the hanging and folding since I prefer my kids not go to school with wrinkled clothes *grin*), so that works out okay.

When I was a kid, my stepdad would gag over pretty much anything. And my mom, bless her sick heart, loved to tease him. So she'd talk about her job at a nursing home while we ate supper. Needless to say, I have an iron stomach. Guess I should thank her for that...LOL

Hellie Sinclair said...

I live alone, so I do it all. I had contemplated engaging a male into helping me hang pictures, but my married friend said, "Absolutely do not do this. I've nearly divorced three times because of this very thing. You'd be better off inviting some girlfriends over to help you with the task."

I still have not hanged any pictures, but I will eventually. I'll probably call my girlfriends. *LOL*

Christie Craig said...

Heather,

I'm not thrilled doing the stove top either. We have the glass top now, but it's white and I hate it.

And we keep Febreze around, too. Jr. uses it on his shoes. I don't know where he got his foot odor problem. LOL.

CC

Christie Craig said...

Donna,

You see, this is where the problem with job assignment is an issue. When someone thinks it's your job, and you don't think it's your job, it's always a eye brow raiser around here.

Which is why I'm johnny on the spot as assigning people job titles.

Thanks for popping in.

CC

Christie Craig said...

Mshellion,

I'm so glad you listened to your friend. Hanging pictures can lead to divorce or bad breakups!

Thanks so much for stopping in.

CC

Anonymous said...

Too funny, Christie!!

I pretty much do everything in the house, although he will do anything I ask (cooking, cleaning, etc.)...but I don't to do anything outside...so to me that makes us even! Because even if he asks, I'm not doing anything outside!

Tessy

Phyllis Bourne said...

Cooking? We both look through the cabinets and fridge and say in unison, "Who the hell does the grocery shopping around here?"

Terri Osburn said...

This is where I admit it would be nice NOT to be single. I have all the jobs. I am working on teaching kiddo (10 yr old girl) to do her own laundry and unload the dishwasher. I'm much too picky about how to load it. We tried that and each ended up in a huff. I'll save that for another time.

All bug finding, killing, odor identifying (which is usually HER), litter box scooping, hamster cage cleaning, and lost item finding is left to me. That last one might be the one that drives me nuts the most. It's almost always RIGHT THERE. Just LOOK. MOVE something. Gah!

Christie Craig said...

Tessy,

That's my hubby, too. If I asked him to mop, he would do it. And he does all the yard work. I'll cover that one next week!

Thanks for stopping in.

CC

Christie Craig said...

Phyllis,

Too funny. Hubby and I both share grocery shopping. I'll admit, he will go alone with a list, I like for him to come with me when I go. Hey, I don't want to bring in all those groceries!

Thanks for popping in.

CC

Christie Craig said...

Terri,

You are so right. They don't see something and it's right before their eyes!!

Hubby has his way of loading dishes, too. When I load them, he'll rearrange. If I'm the last one to put a dish in, I might redo his load, if I can’t get something to fit. It's almost funny, but we never get upset. Hey, if he wants to load the dishes his way, it's fine with me. My mom came down once and got offended. He doesn’t like the way I loaded the dishwasher. I told her, “He’s just crazy mom, but hey, he’s a man doing the dishes. Just let him be.”

Thanks for coming by.

CC

catslady said...

Guess what my husband just said - "There's a cat throw up...". With 6 cats there's always one lol. Very appropriate timing. His main job is spider killer hahaha. We have one of those old time marriages - he does the cars and cuts the grass - I do everything else lol.

Christie Craig said...

Catslady,

I know four cats can create lots of mess. Ahh, but you gotta love 'em.

Thanks for dropping in.

CC

Sandy said...

ROFLMAO

Oh, Christie, you made up for last week, although, it was a good post, too. I still just love your humorouse blogs.

I hate everything to do with house work and cooking. I don't mind laundry, and I would never let my husband do it. He throws everything in together. lol

He cleans the whole basement and garage. He does everything that has to do with the computer because I'm totally illiterate. He has lots of faults, but cooking isn't one of them. He could be a chef because he's so creative and his food tastes good. However, he doesn't cook often any more. He wants to get out of the house and go eat.

Great blog, Christie.

Christie Craig said...

Sandy,

I thought about you when I wrote my blog! I'm glad you are happy. I'm not a big fan of anything to do with housework, either. Cooking I like. Computer? Ha! I have to call my critique/writing partner to talk me down from the computer ledge, because I swear I'm always about to kill myself with stress when ever my computer starts acting batty.

Thanks for stopping in.

CC

Brandy said...

I do all chores around here, even the grass. However, there are a few I refuse to take care of, one being the actual cleaning of the refrigerator. I'll clean out the leftovers, but that once a year thing of taking everything out and wiping it all down? Uh-uh, no way. There are germs there! *G* I also don't kill bugs. If I can help it. But, I take care of the cat litter (and we have eight cats), I clean up the kitty furballs, I take care of the kids, laundry and jeez, I get tired thinking of it all. *G*

Christie Craig said...

Brandy,

I'm tried for you, too!!

And eight kitties. Wow, that's a lot of kitty love.

Thanks for stopping in.

CC

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