A few weeks ago I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business, when my wife Evi—completely unprovoked—attacked me by saying: “I’ve been asked to speak at a three-day VR event in Orlando. You’ll be in charge of the kids.”
Holy shit, I thought. Why God why!?!
Okay okay okay, I’m kidding. Mostly. I am a wee bit scared. A little backstory is needed here: Firstly, I kinda suck maintaining a house. Evi doesn’t believe this; she accuses me of “weaponized incompetence”, which I guess is faking like you suck at something so you’re not asked to do it anymore.
(She got that shit from TikTok, by the way. “Weaponized incompetence”, “mental load”, and “gaslighting” have all been added to our vernacular in the last year. Whenever a new buzzword is used against me, I know it came from that goddamn app. I think she weaponizes TikTok.)
But it’s true! I really am extremely mediocre at running a house! I’m not proud of it, but I am what I am. I blame my mom. She was a wonderful mother, worked a full-time job, raised my sister and me with Dad, and took care of the entire house. And in so doing, didn’t teach me shit about housework.
When I finally moved out for college, I knew fuck-all about maintaining a home. I had to teach myself how to wash dishes, clean a kitchen, iron clothes, cook, vacuum, sweep, mop, dust, Holy Christ, you name it, I didn’t know how to do it. I still mostly suck.
My sister Lori was the same way. She got married at 18-years-old1, and on one of the first nights in their new home, her husband Doug noticed her in front of an entire sink full of dishes, scrubbing the side of a solitary fork for like 30 seconds. He was like, “What in the hell are you doing? At that rate it’s going to take you five hours to wash everything!” So Doug, not exactly a domestic savant himself, had to teach her how to run a kitchen.
Secondly, Evi runs a seriously tight ship. Each of our daughters must be on-time for multiple online Russian language courses a week. Norah attends pre-Pre-K twice a week. Sasha is in Kindergarten at a charter school with a strict uniform policy. And speaking of uniforms, all of Sasha and Norah’s clothes have to be stylish, clean and pressed when they walk out the door.
Sasha is easy because of the uniforms, but fashion selections must be made for Norah, and Evi wasn’t about to let my dumbass do it. Evi left for her trip this morning, and sitting out in the living room as I type are all the clothes Norah will be wearing for the week.
Today was some kind of school holiday (the reason this is being published on a Tuesday this week), so tonight is really the first night of me being truly in charge. So far, so good. They got fed, bathed and put to bed on time. Okay, so maybe I should have been playing lullabies on the home speaker at 7:30 PM like Evi would, instead of, you know, Metallica’s “Seek and Destroy”, but the girls eventually fell asleep after all the headbanging.2
Maybe, just maybe, I’ll make it until Friday.
~JCS
Don’t do this. Don’t ever do this. You have no idea who you are until at least 30 years old. And yes, I know she’ll read this. And I probably don’t have any readers under 18 anyway. I should probably delete this footnote. Nah.
Norah had the audacity to ask, “Daddy, I want beautiful music, not this” when Metallica was on. I’m going to have her DNA tested.
You got it, homie. My partner left me alone with our two girls for 10 days for a trip to Trinidad.
It was mostly ok. A little messy. UNTIL the older one got a hold of some scissors while I was in the shower and decided to give her sister "bangs" and chopped the front of her hair off right to her scalp. Good times.
Nah, Seek and Destroy was a fine and cultured move.