Unjustified Anger

Last night I took Rikki's advice and cleaned my bathroom sink.

The boys made pizza and I cleaned the kitchen and programmed my dishwasher to start the dishes at 4am. I LOVE this dishwasher, which is why we took it with us when we left Canada. It can be programmed to wash dishes up to 24 hours in advance. Sometimes I start a load of laundry and then ask the dishwasher to wait an hour to begin, thereby not running out of hot water. And if, for some reason, we need to run the dishwasher while watching TV in the next room, it's vewy, vewy quiet.

Feeling somewhat more motivated than I have for several days, I made a sink of soapy water and tackled the fridge. I was about half done when The Artist yells from the other room, "Are you going to bang that door all night long!?" WHATEVER! I threw the remaining things back in the frigerator, took out the trash and went to the basement (10 degrees cooler) to sulk.

He wants the house clean, but doesn't want to see, hear, or smell the cleaning. He's not just chemically sensitive, he's sensitive about everything. This would not be the first time I've been criticised for cleaning too loudly.

Finally, after about an hour of intermittent tears and half a Mike's Hard Lime, I came upstairs to finish my chores for the night. And he says, "Are you mad at me?" Yes I am. And I launch into how difficult it is to take care of our lives while spending my days away at the office and my evenings tiptoeing around him at home. How it's unfair that I never get any time at home to myself and when I do I'm expected to do things that would otherwise bother him, like using tile cleaner.

And he shouts back, "I wasn't talking to you! The kid had been pounding her foot on her door in time to her music for at least half an hour and I couldn't take it any longer." Oh.

So yeah.

I never did finish cleaning the fridge last night, but I did wash & dry 3 loads of laundry, mend a pair of shorts needed for the trip to Kansas, read about the Portland Rose Festival as research for my book, and put images of The Artist's paintings on a CD to give to his first art teacher at the Lawrence Arts Center.

Not a bad night's work.