My high-school physics, pre-cal, and calculus teacher had this very dry, cutting sense of humor. A chain-smoking divorcee (I remember doing a make-up test after school one afternoon while she sat next to an open window, smoking discreetly and ashing into the courtyard), she made no secret of her impatience with men. I'll never forget during the last days of school senior year when she imparted these words of wisdom: "All men are good for is killing big bugs and taking out the trash. Oh, and sex...eh, 2 1/2 out of three ain't bad."
I was reminded of this this morning when, as I was making the bed, I heard the rumbling of the garbage truck one street over and realized Jason hadn't taken the trash out the night before because our regular routine had been broken by him giving Ains while I was at a Relay meeting. So I threw on some flip-flops in the dawn's early light and scrambled down to the garage to get the trash to the curb in time.
As I came back into our house and up the steps, I could smell something rotting. It didn't take long to isolate the odor to the kitchen garbage, which hadn't been emptied and contained the scraps from a salmon salad I had made with some grilling leftovers (a Paula Deen recipe, by the way, and it's rocking my lunch bag as I write.) Ick.
I was fuming a little bit as I rushed out with the foul-smelling garbage. In our house, Jason is the bill payer, yard boy, spider killer, post-dinner cleanup man, cranky kid entertainer, and garbage-taker-outer. I handle the rest of the household cleaning and chores, and I have to admit, despite all the help he gives me with Ains and his otherwise reliable adherence to his chores, I get seriously ticked when he doesn't take out the garbage.
Is this rational? No. Does he deserve my ire? Not really; it's not like he's a bum or anything. But I have garbage issues. I inherited my mom's sensitive sniffer (no way I could have drunk illicitly in high school even if I'd wanted to; that schnoz could detect whisky on my dad before he opened the front door) and when we have missed garbage day, our whole house smells like ass to me. I just can't take it; the stench of rotting organic matter invades my synapses and won't leave.
So on the one hand, my physics teacher's mantra of male worthiness applies to my husband. It's just a different 2 1/2 out of three. Not to say more than you want to know, but I really have no complaints in the other areas.
On the other hand, Jason is good for many more things than I could possibly list. I got one of the good ones, and I am grateful. Even if I occasionally have to rush bags of rotting salmon parts out the door in my pajamas to beat the garbage man.
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