Not too long ago, I had a conversation with a woman at work about the distribution of household labor. I said it felt like I did a heck of a lot more around the house than my dear husband, which would be one thing if I was a stay-at-home-mom but, you know, I'm not. (Still wouldn't be fair, exactly, but it might bother me less?) Anyway, she said there have been studies about this sort of thing, and they found that each partner feels they do way more than the other. So if you added up the percentages that they give themselves, it would be way over 100. I said I was sure that's true ... but I still do more. She laughed.
I remembered this conversation last night as I was trying to go to the bathroom undisturbed by a toddler, with little success. I started thinking about everything I had done at home, compared to everything James had done. Here's my recollection:
Things Molly Did | Things James Did |
| put away clean clothes | played horrible boxing video game, loudly |
| did two additional loads of laundry | watched TV on the couch |
| baked sweet potato cupcakes for fall festival at Patrick's daycare | ate cupcakes |
| made cinnamon cream cheese frosting for said cupcakes | played horrible boxing video game, loudly |
| made dinner (scrambled eggs and pancakes, but still) | stirred scrambled eggs, put bacon in microwave |
| loaded the dishwasher | put dirty dishes that should have gone in dishwasher in the sink |
| did dishes in the sink until the dish rack was full | played horrible boxing video game, loudly |
| took Patrick for a walk | played horrible boxing video game, loudly |
| bathed Patrick | smoked some cigarettes |
| took trash out | played horrible boxing video game, loudly |
| pushed trash bin to curb | played with Patrick for 10 minutes, getting him all riled up just before bedtime |
| put Patrick to bed | went to bed |
We also fit in a bit of time to fight about budgeting/money (because that's what we do).
And then I watched Grey's Anatomy and not the World Series, because I cannot for the life of me get excited about Giants-Rangers. Yawn.
