Since my wife retired, she does what many retirees do. Whatever she wants.

Like many families, our children and other family members are scattered across the country like dice across a table. Consequently, some of her time is spent flying or driving for visits in Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, and other destinations.

But, being gone from home requires the one thing that most wives dread. Leaving their husbands unattended. For whatever reason, women think that men are completely incapable of handling a few chores in their absence.

So, they leave lists of instructions for you. As if husbands need that much detail for laundry, meals, watering gardens, household cleaning, or taking care of pets.

I resent the assumption that men cannot be trusted to run a household for a handful of days, and that we require a written roadmap to make it through a week or two by ourselves. After all, before I got married, I lived with my mom and dad and got along just fine by myself.

But, I know what will happen if I don’t follow the written set of directions she left me. I’ll be in trouble. So, following the list is what I’m doing.

According to her laundry notes, I’m supposed to separate the whites into one pile, the darks into another pile, and the towels into another. I did that, but I’m not sure what the point of all that was since I was easily able to cram all of them into one load. However, even though she said to use cold water, I know that hot cleans better, so I turned it to the hot water setting. I also tossed some bleach in there to kill any germs.

Her instructions on heating up these frozen meals just say to, “Follow the directions on the box.” I got as far as the temp setting, which is really all you need to know, and put the lasagna in the oven. I probably should have read on down to the part about how long to leave this in the oven, but it’s too late now because it’s already in there. By the way, these boxes are flammable.

My wife spends a lot of time on her garden, and she is very particular about who she allows to go near it. She babies the plants like children. Her specific instructions were to turn on the soaker hoses for each section for 20 minutes. But, I spotted the two 55-gallon rain barrels and decided to tump them over, flooding all of the garden areas at once. This was done in about one minute, which saved me 19 minutes that I can now spend on more laundry.

Glad I paid attention in math class.

She asked me to dust and vacuum while she was gone. According to these notes, I should use a cloth with the furniture polish and lightly go over each picture frame, shelf, cabinet, and so on, before I vacuum. Realizing this was going to take a ton of time and that I needed to see if the clothes were ready for the dryer, I grabbed the electric leaf blower from the garage and zipped through the house in short order. I was able to blow all of the dust out the back door. Unintentionally, a couple of picture frames and the cat went with it.

Which reminds me, I’m supposed to feed the pets. The notes say that the goldfish food is to the right of the fish tank, which is where I found it. I’m not sure what this food is made of, but it looks like little flakes of something. It’s not very appealing, so I crumbled up a piece of light bread across the top of the water. I remember doing that at the pond when I was a kid, and the fish went nuts. They loved it. I’m sure these guys will too.

The cat not only hates the leaf blower, but she also doesn’t seem to like her mother being gone. She’s constantly meowing and weaving around my feet, almost tripping me everywhere I go. The notes say to feed the cat one cup of food a day, but it doesn’t say which day. I went ahead and fed her the first day after my wife left. I hope that was the right one.

My wife comes home tomorrow and I’m glad. It’s not that I mind having to take care of the house when she’s gone, but I don’t have the heart to tell her that quite often, men figure out better ways to do things.

There’s no way I’ll dare tell her that, though. She thinks men are incompetent.

©2017 John Moore

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