Gotta love writers...

...unless, of course, you're related to them.

I enjoyed parts of One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk about Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love, edited by Rebecca Walker. (What I didn't enjoy was that needlessly long subtitle.)

The collection includes essays by Jenny Block, asha bandele, Dan Savage, ZZ Packer, Neal Pollack, and Judith Levine. I skipped the one about polyamory, because, frankly, the idea of two husbands gives me the heebies (please note: this is not because Mr. CR is hard to live with; this is because I am hard to live with). I found Savage's adoption story interesting, and I thoroughly enjoyed Levine's essay about money matters when you don't get married, but I loved Pollack's (Pollack is also the author of the enjoyable memoir Alternadad) essay, about the ugly realities of living together in a marriage, particularly when both partners work at home:

 "I'm not a househusband and Regina isn't a housewife. Neither of us particularly likes to upkeep. Though we're happy most of the time, Regina and I often say that if we could afford a cleaning service, or any kind of service, once a week or even once a month, it would help our marriage enormously. But we can't, so instead we wade through our unspecific roles, doing the best we can, trying to keep the living room free of spiderwebs. This creates mild tension, which manifests itself in conversations, usually when the kid isn't home, like:

'Why don't you do the fucking dishes?'

'Why don't you do the fucking dishes?'

'Because I don't fucking want to, that's why. So can you tell me why the kitchen floor is such a mess?'

'I don't know. Why don't you fucking clean it?"" (p. 140.)

Now that, unlike a conversation about polyamory, is a conversation I can relate to.

Comments

[Jessica]

My ex-husband and I used to play poker for household chores. We assigned point values to everything that needed to be done that week - taking out recycling was 1 point, cleaning the oven was 10 - and counted out that number of chips. We set a timer, and when it went off we finished that hand, traded chips, and bought chores off the list. It worked pretty well, until we realized that we usually broke even and gravitated to the same chores.

I'm not sure how our game would work with more than two players, but luckily you and Mr. CR wouldn't have that problem, either.

[Citizen Reader]

Jessica!
That is a novel idea, and one that is much less profanity filled than Pollack's. We've gone another way with it--Mr. CR doesn't clean but he also accepts that I have a high filth tolerance, and never really suggests that it's time to clean. When I start getting grossed out (which takes a lot) I do a cursory wipe-down and hope for the best. The way I see it, someday we'll probably move, and we'll have to clean the house really well then, so why bother now?

It's not much of a system and there are truly scary amounts of cat hair in our carpets, but it's been working for nigh on seven years now, and I figure I don't have time to start fixing what isn't broken. :)

How are you going to work things with Rocket Scientist now? Gonna try poker cleaning again and hope you both like different tasks?

[Jessica]

Funny, I just remembered this thread and got curious what you had to say... I've worked out a really elaborate rotation system, whereby the three of us take turns cooking dinner and doing chores every night. The goal was to make sure none of us had to do the same thing two nights running, or on the same night of the week two weeks in a row. I'm pretending it's for the benefit of Sweetie Junior, who has, shall we say, not had the benefit of a mother who took home ec in parochial school to teach her traditional homemaking skills. But really it's for RS. You could scratch "Wash Me" into his bathtub.

[Citizen Reader]

Jessica!
Good on you for the rotation! I'm guessing I'm closer to RS in my habits--if it was up to me, I'd give the place a good once-over once a year and call that good enough. Oh wait...that is what I do. (And good luck getting some of those good habits to rub off on Sweetie Junior--his future roommates will thank you.)