The Deal

Well my friends, it is time to come clean about Dion and I. We have been married for 8 years (this Sept), and for about 7 of those years we had a deal. It was one we agreed on, one that we faithfully have been following, and today the deal is off. Let me fill you in on some history.

The food store. I hate it. I hate going up and down every isle, trying to figure out what to get, trying to shop healthy, trying to not spend too much money. But there is one thing I hate even more, and that is going food shopping with Dion. I would rather bleed out of my eyes. I would rather clean out the kitty box, I would rather have little hang nails on each finger that bleed than go to the store with him. It is painful. Every isle must be conquered. Every label must be compared to the label next to it. Every ounce must be accounted for. Do we buy this kind of bacon, or this kind? You see that one has more fat on it, which should we get? How about these fish sticks? Which one will be more crunchy? Wait! Toilet paper! 2 ply or 1? Does it matter? Juice! We need juice, and I want orange with lots and lots of pulp. I like to chew my orange juice (why not just buy an orange?!?). So that is what I had to listen to when Dion and I went to the store together.

Laundry. It was always an adventure when Dion did the laundry (still is actually). I have had clothes end up a pretty shade of pink, I have had clean clothes end up balled up on the folding table with permanent wrinkles formed. Socks? Never matched up. Clothes put away? BWAH HA HA HA!!! That's funny. ("I don't know where they go").

So here was the deal. I hated shopping, Dion would do it from now on. Dion was not so good at laundry, I would do it from now on. Good deal, right? I thought so, until yesterday I looked in our pantry, and noticed the complete lack of food in it. Then I began to think about when Dion went shopping for food. for example, the other day he came home with milk, juice (crappy pulpy orange juice), a huge box of frozen spare ribs, and I kid you not, a brown box (the type you get in the mail) of 10 pounds of bacon. Oh, and Mountain Dew and Diet Coke. I will go on record that I love bacon. And I find spare ribs to be tasty, but what can I put together for the girls to eat with those options? Not a whole lot. So this morning I find that the girls have dumped their laundry baskets of clean clothes in the laundry room....lovely, I was hoping for more work to do. Dion makes the comment of how nice it will be when they can do their own laundry. HA! When THEY can do their own laundry. I warned him that when that time comes, I am retiring from laundry, and actually, I was thinking of boycotting your laundry again until you take your clean clothes upstairs, I have no where else to stack them. And he says....

"You don't have to do my laundry."

Wait. What did he just say? So all of these years, when we have had a deal, and even though when he shops he brings in large quantities of bacon and calls it grocery shopping, I have still done my end of the deal, and now he says that I really haven't had to do it? Well. That was easy. He has just saved me lots of time. No more trying to figure out if his dress sock is navy or black, no more washing his pants only to have little pieces of wet (but clean) paper stuck to everything in the wash, no more hanging up every single one of his T-shirts (I don't know why he hangs them all, but I did it, because that is how he wanted it). I can feel my spare time growing by the minute. I am actually excited for this new adventure. I am done. The girls have a few more years left, and then I will be done with them too. I was taught at 11 how to wash my own clothes, and from then on, I did. My kids will be taught the same. When, and if, they go to college, they are more than welcome to bring their dirty clothes home to wash, but they will be washing them. Plus I don't think I want to see what kind of underwear is going to be out there in the 2020's, and I certainly don't want to know if my kids are wearing them.

Of course, Dion will still be at that point trying to match his navy sock with another navy sock. Wait, who am I kidding? He won't even try to match them, he'll wear a black sock with a navy sock and not think twice about it. That's a promise.