Relationship Maintenance

So I am sitting here in our sitting room. What else would one do in such a room? I am listening to killer tunes on our stereo system that the Princess paid a fortune for, thanks to me, and wondering “What am I going to do today?” I have been doing chores like laundry and I have forwarded my resume to a company that requested it. Hell I even made the beds.

Making the beds used to be something I always prided myself in doing first thing in the morning. But then I only had one bed to make and it only had a few of those annoying pillows that cost a fortune just to make the bedroom look finished. And then I married a Princess with a lot of pillows, as one would expect a Princess to have. In the beginning, I gladly helped her or took it upon myself to make the bed all by myself. But that was still the “wooing stage” in our relationship as she likes to call it.

Straightening sheets is easy. The problem is all the pillows. Because by the time I am finished making the Princess’ bed I still have to arrange all of the Princess’ pillows. I think there are about 20 of them. Now I will readily admit it looks great when it is done. But I can never remember how to arrange them. Sometimes I find a really good look with all of them. I even get accolades from the Princess when one of my arrangements reaches spectacular. Unfortunately, I am a lazy man (which is why my current gig works for me) and I never draw a sketch of my best arrangements. Not that I can draw anyway, but I am fairly certain I wouldn’t draw one even if I could.

I hate arranging all of those darn pillows. Worse, I hate “un-arranging” them at night. By the time we get to bed, I am too tired to want to do it. Heck, even the Princess hates it. However, she isn’t about to get rid of all of them, so the pillows stay. And if I want to stay, I better make the bed. So I do ….sometimes.

I have to admit, I am overwhelmed by the all of the chores that need to be done to run a house. Thank goodness we have maids. But there are so many other things that need to be accomplished like, grocery shopping, laundry, light cleaning/straightening up the house after a 4 year old and general maintenance. Just all of the phone calls that are needed to arrange for the maids, gardeners and maintenance takes so much time. After those few phone calls I am ready to pop open a beer and call it a day. I am sure that the Princess works a little harder at her Global gig. I know I used to when I was the CFO. But then I had a secretary to screen calls, and employees to return most of them.

In this gig, I have to delegate my authority to myself. I am still good at delegating, but my employee still resists getting the work done. It makes it even harder when the Princess delegates chores to me. You know, the ones where she tells me what to do, how to do it and when to do it by. I have to admit that my maleness still makes regular appearances when she does. That combined with my laziness, means that I accomplish very little. However, if I want to keep this gig, I know I need to do what the Princess delegates. And if I want any brownie points, I feel I need to do some of the things on my personal list as well.

I read most of the Men are from Mars Women are from Venus Book (laziness prevented me from reading it all). It was fascinating that the author mentioned that we men think we earn brownie points for doing chores. Turns out we don’t. Makes it a little hard when a man is also a SAHD. Who is supposed to give me the brownie points? My high earning Princess who is out doing a “man’s job?” Am I supposed to give them to myself, even though I am a man in a woman’s role? I think I secretly expect it to be both. Which is why I like to get a few things done early (like updating my IPod to play more killer music on our expensive stereo system) so I can revel in my success and call it a day by 9 am. That works until the Princess comes home and she is tired from a long hard day and asks me, “What did you do today?” Man how I hate that question (it ranks right up there with “What’s on your agenda today?”)! Not that they aren’t fair questions, and she is after all interested in me and my life. It just gets hard to answer the question to justify my existence when I stop working by 9, which happens to be the time she is usually getting started.

And then there is the whole gardener and maintenance man thing. Most of our yard is woods, but there are beds to weed, a little grass to mow and plants to take care of. I had gardeners in Texas, but our yard under maintenance was bigger, it was hotter and the labor was cheaper. So here in Connecticut, I have that responsibility. Now it only takes about 20 minutes to cut the grass and I never pull the weeds so it really isn’t that big of a deal, but the yard looks, well … just a bit untidy. Okay, it looks like crap, but it does have potential. Before Carson (“BC”) was born, I took great pride in the yard and worked on it all the time. I even won Yard of the Month! BC I only had to worry about the yard and light maintenance. Now I have to run the house. Since I have only me to delegate to, it takes longer and even less brownie points get bestowed. You know Ladies, the brownie points really are important!

Not that I am a good maintenance man. Until I met the Princess, I never really fixed anything. But she was used to her father and ex-husband being around. Turns out the eager beaver overachievers could fix anything. Before the Princess, I was happy and self-fulfilled when I replaced a light bulb. Now I have to be able to fix cars, plumbing and pool equipment. So I have learned what I could, cursed a lot at instructions written by engineers from a foreign land and tried to earn those coveted brownie points. Turns out they actually do get awarded for maintenance stuff.

Maybe that is why my ex-wife left me for the maintenance man. But that’s another story.

Sacked Sahd