One year since my marriage, I know what to expect and what not to expect from the man. I can expect discussions lasting for hours about everything under the sun, great insights into science, medicine, cricket and Indian politics. I can expect bickering, laughter, melodrama, teasing and unconditional support for whatever I like to do.
What I definitely cannot expect is help with household chores: I do the laundry and the dishes and the cooking and the cleaning and the groceries and the taxes. If I ask him for help, the man always find a book that he simply cannot keep down, or an article that is of crucial importance, or, if all else fails, an urgent call of nature that lasts for a couple of hours. I groan and whine and eventually do whatever needs to be done.
My parents were here for 3 months, during which I realized I was pregnant. After getting used to an endless stream of hot food kept in front of me, of a well organized kitchen, of clean clothes ironed and folded neatly, of trash boxes never getting overloaded to such an extent that the whole house smelled of trash, I was left adrift, bereft, once my parents left.
It took me three weeks to recover from this. I found that I didn't want to cook, or clean or eat anything that I had to cook. Nor did I want to eat out. I just wanted things to be the way they had been for the past three months. The man was blissfully unaware of my growing desperation. He was on an inpatient rotation at the hospital and he had his hands full. Even if he had been aware of what was going on with me, there wasn't much he could have done about it, since he had to leave by 6am and would return after 10pm.
I cried a lot, wrote long and whiny emails to anybody that I could think of, ate a lot of junk food and did no work in the lab. I had no energy.
Then the man, bless him, took 4 days off and took me to the Bahamas for a vacation. No beds to make, no guilt trips about unclean houses or not wanting to cook. There, under that warm sun, by the beach, I made a resolution: we would cook at home and eat healthy, we would have that laundry done and we would not keep any dirty dishes stacked up for too long. I mentioned to this to the man, who was enthusiastic about it. But I did not mention the plan I was forming in my head, but instead pondered about it until I was ready to give it a try.
The reason the man doesn't do household chores is because he thinks they are dreary, mundane, not worth the time that could be spent thinking of magnificent, inspiring thoughts. "I have to sell it to him right", I thought, and hence devised this plan:
For cooking: I would cut all the veggies and keep all the ingredients ready and then make it into a game. He would have to pretend to be a surgeon performing an operation and I would be the nurse handing him all the ingredients. In the end, he would cook, I would watch and surreptitiously supervise, and I wouldn't feel like I was doing all the work.
For laundry: we would take all the clothes to a laundromat, dump them there, and then go out for coffee and discussions about the world. That way, we would both get what we wanted.
For trash: emotionally blackmail him into doing so, by reminding him of pregnant state.
House cleaning: would just have to wait until everything else worked out.
Well. One week after we have returned from the BA, I can report results:
Trash: plan works wonderfully. Will have to change tactics somewhat to continue with success, because man realized instantly what game was up.
Laundry: also has worked surprisingly well. No change of tactics necessary, as man has bought into the idea quite well.
Cooking: Hmm... this plan would have worked better if I had had more self control. I cut the veggies and kept all the ingredients ready. I cooed to the man in the nicest way and said, "Won't you help me with this, baby? It always works so much better when you do it. Let's pretend that you're a surgeon and I'm a nurse and I'll watch you cook". It worked well for the first few minutes. Then man started showing off a bit too much. He said, "See, when you cook, you don't do it scientifically. There's a reason we add this bit first and that bit afterwards. And you hurry up too much. You have to let it blend in, absorb, synthesize", and so on. So much that, halfway through the cooking, I lost my temper, whacked him on the bum and told him I could manage very well by myself, thank you.
And that was the end of that.
Now the kitchen is my domain once more and I need to figure out how to get that man back in again.
* to be continued*
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