Life's a Chore

I love my lunchtime group of girls. We always have the best talks, and for the most part, they are all 10-30 years older than me. Mind you, none of these are military wives (although one was back in the day, however, her husband never deployed and he only joined as an officer so he wouldn’t get drafted, and they never spent a significant amount (longer than a month) of time apart). I walk by and “pick up” my two good friends S and E on my way up the stairs to the lunchroom. We meet a few other girls from other departments and our conversations vary every single day. We share advice, funny stories, vacation stories, family gossip, talk about their kids and grandkids, (sometimes there is crying involved – ok that was only one time and it was me, but whatever) and very rarely do we actually talk about work-work. It’s just like it’s understood that for our 45-60 minute lunch break, we don’t talk about work, and we’re all in a silent agreement about this. Sometimes one will oftentimes complain about their husband. Even my work best friend S onetime said, as her husband was preparing to go to Vermont for a week for a conference and he was trying to make sure everything was in order for while he was away, “sometimes it’s just easier when I have to do everything myself, and not take his schedule into consideration.” She immediately shot me a look that conveyed, “I’m sorry, I’m sure you’d rather have it the other way around.” We didn’t say anything about it afterwards, but I know she didn’t say that intentionally to get to me.

But today was one of those days where what we were talking about got to me. Somehow we got on the topic of household chores, and what is their ‘chore’, and what is their husbands ‘chore.’ Most of the girls agreed that while their husbands take out the trashcan, why can’t he also remember to put a bag in the trash can? Or when he uses the last of the toilet paper, why can’t he put a new roll on? Or when he uses the last bit of the shampoo, or soap, or toothpaste, or the last Q-Tip, why can’t he replace or refill what was there? And how annoying it is that he can do half of the chore, and then leave her to do the other half?

I wish I could be complaining about how Seth empties the trash, but doesn’t put a bag in it. I would so badly love it if I could say how much he was annoying me and I just want to get away from him for a day or so. I wish I could complain about how he leaves his dirty dishes in the sink, or his dirty socks on the floor. I wish I could bitch at him to help me out around the house. I wish I could just get some help from him on the chores period. But no, I can’t. Know why? Because he’s deployed for a whole year, so I get to do this all myself, day after day, week after week, with no help. Luckily kids aren’t involved, so it really is all my ‘mess’, but even so, I would give anything to have his mess at home with mine. I would give anything to be able to eat dinner with him every night and have to do his dishes, and even his laundry. I would give anything to be able to argue with him over who does what household chore.

I would give anything to have him be able to come home right now.

On a random side note, "chore" is a really weird word if you think about it. It sounds weird. It's only one syllable. It looks weird. It's actually a stupid word now that I think of it.